Carob
The carob is a flowering evergreen tree or shrub in the legume family, Fabaceae. It is widely cultivated for its edible pods, and as an ornamental tree in gardens and landscapes. The carob tree is native to the Mediterranean region and the Middle East.
The ripe, dried, and sometimes toasted pod is often ground into carob powder, which is sometimes used to replace cocoa powder. Carob bars, as well as carob chips'', and carob treats are often available in health food stores. Carob pods are naturally sweet, not bitter, and contain no theobromine or caffeine.
Etymology
The word "carob" comes from Middle French carobe, which borrowed it from Arabic خَرُّوبٌ, ultimately perhaps from Akkadian language kharubu or Aramaic kharubha, related to Hebrew harubh. Ceratonia siliqua, the scientific name of the carob tree, derives from the Greek kerátiοn κεράτιον "fruit of the carob", and Latin siliqua "pod, carob".In English, it is also known as "St John's bread", as well as "locust tree", the designation also applied to several other trees from the same family.
The unit "carat", used for weighing precious metal and stones, also comes from κεράτιον, as alluding to an ancient practice of weighing gold and gemstones against the seeds of the carob tree by people in the Middle East. The system was eventually standardized, and one carat was fixed at 0.2 gram.
In late Roman times, the pure gold coin known as the solidus weighed 24 carob seeds. As a result, the carat also became a measure of purity for gold. Thus, 24-carat gold means 100% pure, 12-carat gold means the alloy contains 50% gold.
Carob tree
Morphology
The carob tree grows up to tall. The crown is broad and semispherical, supported by a thick trunk with rough brown bark and sturdy branches. Its leaves are long, alternate, pinnate, and may or may not have a terminal leaflet. It is frost-tolerant to roughly.Most carob trees are dioecious and some are hermaphroditic, so strictly male trees do not produce fruit. When the trees blossom in autumn, the flowers are small and numerous, spirally arranged along the inflorescence axis in catkin-like racemes borne on spurs from old wood and even on the trunk ; they are pollinated by both wind and insects. The male flowers smell like human semen, an odor that is caused in part by amines.
The fruit is a legume, that is elongated, compressed, straight, or curved, and thickened at the sutures. The pods take a full year to develop and ripen. When the sweet ripe pods eventually fall to the ground, they are eaten by various mammals, such as swine, thereby dispersing the hard inner seed in the excrement.
The seeds of the carob tree contain leucodelphinidin, a colourless flavanol precursor related to leucoanthocyanidins.
Habitat
Although cultivated extensively, carob can still be found growing wild in eastern Mediterranean regions, and has become naturalized in the west.The tree is typical in the southern Portuguese region of the Algarve, where the tree is called alfarrobeira, and the fruit alfarroba. It is also seen in southern and eastern Spain, mainly in the regions of Andalusia, Murcia and Valencia ; Malta, on the Italian islands of Sicily and Sardinia, in Southern Croatia, in eastern Bulgaria, and in Southern Greece, Cyprus, as well as on many Greek islands such as Crete and Samos. The common Greek name is χαρουπιά, or ξυλοκερατιά. In Turkey, it is known as "goat's horn"., Italy|alt=Carob tree
The various trees known as algarrobo in Latin America belong to a different subfamily, Mimosoideae of the Fabaceae. Early Spanish settlers named them algarrobo after the carob tree because they also produce pods with sweet pulp.
Ecology
The carob genus, Ceratonia, belongs to the legume family, Fabaceae, and is believed to be an archaic remnant of a part of this family now generally considered extinct. It grows well in warm temperate and subtropical areas, and tolerates hot and humid coastal areas. As a xerophyte, carob is well adapted to the conditions of the Mediterranean region with just of rainfall per year.Carob trees can survive long periods of drought, but to grow fruit, they need of rainfall per year. They prefer well-drained, sandy loams and are intolerant of waterlogging, but the deep root systems can adapt to a wide variety of soil conditions and are fairly salt-tolerant. After being irrigated with saline water in the summer, carob trees could possibly recover during winter rainfalls. In some experiments, young carob trees were capable of basic physiological functions under high salt conditions.
Not all legume species can develop a symbiotic relationship with rhizobia to make use of atmospheric nitrogen. It remains unclear if carob trees have this ability: Some findings suggest that it is not able to form root nodules with rhizobia, while in another more recent study, trees have been identified with nodules containing bacteria believed to be from the genus Rhizobium. However, a study measuring the 15N-signal in the tissue of the carob tree did not support the theory that carob trees naturally use atmospheric nitrogen.
Cultivation and orchard management
The vegetative propagation of carob is naturally restricted due to its low adventitious rooting potential. Therefore, grafting and air-layering may prove to be more effective methods of asexual propagation. Seeds are commonly used as the propagation medium. The sowing occurs in pot nurseries in early spring and the cooling- and drying-sensitive seedlings are then transplanted to the field in the next year after the last frost. Carob trees enter slowly into production phase. Where in areas with favorable growing conditions, the cropping starts 3–4 years after budding, with the nonbearing period requiring up to 8 years in regions with marginal soils. Full bearing of the trees occurs mostly at a tree-age of 20–25 years when the yield stabilizes. The orchards are traditionally planted in low densities of 25–45 trees per hectare. Hermaphrodite plants or male trees, which produce fewer or no pods, respectively, are usually planted in lower densities in the orchards as pollenizers.Intercropping with other tree species is widely spread. Not much cultivation management is required. Only light pruning and occasional tilling to reduce weeds is necessary. Nitrogen-fertilizing of the plants has been shown to have positive impacts on yield performance. Although it is native to moderately dry climates, two or three summers irrigation greatly aid the development, hasten the fruiting, and increase the yield of a carob tree.
Harvest and post-harvest treatment
The most labour-intensive part of carob cultivation is harvesting, which is often done by knocking the fruit down with a long stick and gathering them together with the help of laid-out nets. This is a delicate task because the trees are flowering at the same time and care has to be taken not to damage the flowers and the next year's crop. The literature recommends research to get the fruit to ripen more uniformly or also for cultivars which can be mechanically harvested.After harvest, carob pods have a moisture content of 10–20% and should be dried down to a moisture content of 8% so the pods do not rot. Further processing separates the kernels from the pulp. This process is called kibbling and results in seeds and pieces of carob pods. Processing of the pulp includes grinding for animal feed production or roasting and milling for human food industry. The seeds have to be peeled which happens with acid or through roasting. Then the endosperm and the embryo are separated for different uses.
Pests and diseases
Only a few pests are known to cause severe damage in carob orchards, so they have traditionally not been treated with pesticides. Some generalist pests such as the larvae of the leopard moth, the dried fruit moth, small rodents such as rats and gophers can cause damage occasionally in some regions. Only some cultivars are severely susceptible to mildew disease. One pest directly associated with carob is the larva of the carob moth, which can cause extensive postharvest damage.Cadra calidella'' attack carob crops before harvest and infest products in stores. This moth, prevalent in Cyprus, will often infest the country's carob stores. Research has been conducted to understand the physiology of the moth, in order to gain insight on how to monitor moth reproduction and lower their survival rates, such as through temperature control, pheromone traps, or parasitoid traps.
Cultivars and breeding aims
Most of the roughly 50 known cultivars are of unknown origin and only regionally distributed. The cultivars show high genetic and therefore morphological and agronomical variation. No conventional breeding by controlled crossing has been reported, but selection from orchards or wild populations has been done. Domesticated carobs can be distinguished from their wild relatives by some fruit-yielding traits such as building of greater beans, more pulp, and higher sugar contents. Also, genetic adoption of some varieties to the climatic requirements of their growing regions has occurred. Though a partially successful breaking of the dioecy happened, the yield of hermaphroditic trees still cannot compete with that of female plants, as their pod-bearing properties are worse. Future breeding would be focused on processing-quality aspects, as well as on properties for better mechanization of harvest or better-yielding hermaphroditic plants. The use of modern breeding techniques is restricted due to low polymorphism for molecular markers.Production
In 2017, world production of carob was 136,540 tonnes, led by Portugal, with 30% of the world total. Italy, Morocco, Turkey, Greece and Spain were the next major producers.Uses
Food
Carob products consumed by humans come from the dried, sometimes roasted, pod, which has two main parts: the pulp accounts for 90% and the seeds 10% by weight. Carob pulp is sold either as flour or "chunks". The flour of the carob embryo can also be used for human and animal nutrition, but the seed is often separated before making carob powder.Carob pods are mildly sweet on their own, so they are used in powdered, chip or syrup form as an ingredient in cakes and cookies, sometimes as a substitute for chocolate in recipes because of the color, texture, and rich taste of carob. In Malta, a traditional sweet called karamelli tal-harrub and eaten during the Christian holidays of Lent and Good Friday is made from carob pods. Also, dried carob fruit is traditionally eaten on the Jewish holiday of Tu Bishvat.
Locust bean gum
The production of locust bean gum, a thickening agent used in the food industry, is the most important economic use of carob seeds Locust bean gum is used as a thickening agent and stabilizer to replace fat in low-calorie products, or as a substitute for gluten. To make of locust bean gum, of carob seeds are needed, which must come from roughly of carob pod fruit.Locust bean gum is produced from the endosperm, which accounts for 42–46% of the carob seed, and is rich in galactomannans. Galactomannans are hydrophilic and swell in water. If galactomannans are mixed with other gelling substances, such as carrageenan, they can be used to effectively thicken the liquid part of food. This is used extensively in canned food for animals in order to get the "jellied" texture.
Animal feed
While chocolate contains the chemical compound theobromine in levels that are toxic to some mammals, carob contains none, and it also has no caffeine, so it is sometimes used to make chocolate-like treats for dogs. Carob pod meal is also used as an energy-rich feed for livestock, particularly for ruminants, though its high tannin content may limit this use.Historically, carob pods were mainly used for animal fodder in the Maltese Islands, apart from times of famine or war, when they formed part of the diet of many Maltese people. On the Iberian Peninsula, carob pods were historically fed to donkeys.
Composition
The pulp of a carob pod is about 48–56% sugars and 18% cellulose and hemicellulose. Some differences in sugar content are seen between wild and cultivated carob trees: ~531 g/kg dry weight in cultivated varieties and ~437 g/kg in wild varieties. Fructose and glucose levels do not differ between cultivated and wild carob. The embryo is rich in proteins. The testa, or seed coat, contains cellulose, lignins, and tannins.Syrup and drinks
Carob pods are about 1/3 to 1/2 sugar by weight, and this sugar can be extracted into a syrup. In Malta, a carob syrup is made out of the pods. Carob syrup is also used in Crete, and Cyprus exports it.In Egypt, crushed pods are heated to caramelize its sugar, then water added and boiled for sometime. The result is a cold beverage, also called kharrub, which is sold by juice shops and street vendors, specially in summer.
Carob is used for compote, liqueur, and syrup in Turkey, Malta, Portugal, Spain, and Sicily. In Libya, carob syrup is used as a complement to asida. The so-called "carob syrup" made in Peru is actually from the fruit of the Prosopis nigra tree. Because of its strong taste, carob syrup is sometimes flavored with orange or chocolate.