You can find fruits in many colors, and that color keeps on changing until they are ripened, the best and the brightest color occurs when fruits entirely ripened. But one question that comes to everyone’s mind is, why do fruits change colors?
The one way to answer this question is what’s happening inside the fruits when it’s ripening.
There are many types of fruits to eat, most of them start with some shade of green. It is because of chlorophyll present in them in abundance. Chlorophyll is a pigment which with the help of nutrients from the soil and the sun, is used to make most of the fruit’s content. At one point of state in development of fruit, usually, when the fruit’s seeds are fully matured, that’s when the ripening process starts, in most of the fruits it’s triggered by the ethylene – it’s a natural hydrocarbon gas.
How it all starts
It’s still unknown how ethylene starts the ripening process. Still, ethylene is responsible for turning on and off some genes, which further create various enzymes that make the ripening process easy. And it also converts the starch into sugar and pectinases, which is responsible for cell walls breaking down in fruit, further softening it, making it more accessible inside.
After this, the chlorophyll breaks down with the help of hydrolytic enzymes, and it removes the green color of the fruit. When this happens, some pigments also get synthesized, and others that were covered by chlorophyll get revealed. The two primary things responsible for producing colors are carotenoids, they are accountable for fruit color yellow and orange and anthocyanins, they are responsible for the purple, red, and blue fruit color.
It happens inside the fruits when it’s ripening, and it’s scientifically proven that fruits change colors with the help of chlorophyll and two other pigments carotenoids and anthocyanins.
We hope you found this piece of information fruitful.
