Lemons are
one of the most popular citrus fruits in the world, and are widely used for
culinary purposes, since they are a good source of vitamins and aid in
digestion. It also adds a pleasant taste and aroma to food. Furthermore, lemon
juice is one of the most popular drinks in the world as it is very healthy,
delicious, and inexpensive.
On the
other hand, Lemon Oil is one of the most using oil in fragrance industry for
Fine Fragrance (fragrance for perfumes, deodorants, colognes etc.) and
Industrial Fragrance (soaps, household products, personal care products etc.).
It gives perfect splash, brightness and fresh nuances to fragrances which makes
it a very special, unique and unreplaceable ingredients for all industry.
Importance of Lemon for Turks
We eat
everything with Lemon, well of course not everything but if you want to make a
list of that, better to count food we eat WITHOUT lemon, assure you it would be
much way shorter list. We eat all types of salads with lemon including salads
with yogurt, actually some eat yogurt with lemon too, we eat all types of
fishes (fried, baked, barbecued) with –a lot of- lemon, we eat most of the side
dishes (meze) with lemon, tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, lettuces, cabbage,
broccoli, all vegetables let’s say and olives, most of the soups, cold meat
foods, hot meat foods, some fruits, most of the deserts and drinks for sure, we
drink our national drink tea with lemon (an average Turk consume 4-5 glass of
tea per day), we drink beer with lemon, coke with lemon, all herbal teas with
lemon, many alcoholic beverages with lemon, lemonade with lemon and many ppl
eat lemon when they just want to eat something!!
Wow i see no that.. I guess we *Turks* are the main enemy of all lemons!! And our vengeance does not end by
putting all lemons IN our bodies but ON our bodies too.
We have our
traditional “welcoming perfume” for those who visit us in our flats. Named KOLONYA. And guess
what!! This perfume is an Eau de Cologne of LEMON! Yes we are welcoming our
guest with a special type of lemon cologne consist of Lemon Fragrance with
70-80 percent of Ethyl Alcohol, we pour this cologne into their hands right
after they placed themselves to their seats.
But this cologne doesn’t just a
welcoming joy for us, but a cleanser for all types of dirtiness on our body or
in our house, we put it on to the area of a pimp after we squeeze or when we
have scratch we siterilize the area with this cologne or right after we shave
we put this 70% alcoholic solution on our faces.. Or sometimes it is just a
mal-odor killer for our ovens!!!
I cannot list here all the occasion we use
this God-Like cologne here but I have to list one last thing which you can
easily imagine, some of us additionally drink it of course because it tastes
good!!
Do not
worry, I am done! However it is not an end of the list for usage of lemon in an
ordinary Turks life but I have to add one last thing, we use lemon
juice as a product to shape our hair for god sake! And the best thing to do that is taking a
raw lemon from fridge and going to bathroom and juice it into hand and put it
into our hair to shape it.
Well I must add it is not happening now but it was a
best way to do that in old times.
LEMON PRODUCTION in TURKEY
After
having that list above, I need to mention about Lemon production in the world
and Turkey. Many of you may not know that but Turkey is the 7. Biggest
producers of Lemon in the world following the biggest countries India, Mexico,
Argentina, China, Brazil, USA!!
In order to
land space, Turkey has very few according to its competitors but surprisingly
produce tons of Lemons. Contrary to popular belief, Turkey is producing much
more lemon than Italy and Spain!!! And almost more than America too. Check the
list below which shows Lemon Production amount of countries in 2010.
2010
1.
|
India
|
2,629,200
|
2.
|
Mexico
|
1,891,400
|
3.
|
Argentina
|
1,113,380
|
4.
|
People’s Republic of China
|
1,058,105
|
5.
|
Brazil
|
1,020,350
|
6.
|
United States
|
800,137
|
7.
|
Turkey
|
787,063
|
8.
|
Iran
|
706,800
|
9.
|
Spain
|
578,200
|
10.
|
Italy
|
522,377
|
But WHERE do we produce that much Lemon?? Please check our Citrus map here, thanks to Turkish Citrus Promotion Group!! ;
Mersin is a
city in south part of Turkey which is the main supplier of Lemon. Almost 65 %
of all lemon production belongs to this cute city. If you visit Mersin, you can
see lemon trees EVERYWHERE, in gardens, streets, farms, shopping malls even.)
According
to Agricultural Ministry of Turkey, in 2013 Turkey had 8 million of Lemon Trees
in the field of 274,252 decares (1 decare is 1000 m2) where 726,283 tons of
Lemon produced with yield of 112 Kg of Lemon per tree.
If you are curious of
Export Numbers, here we go, in 2010 Turkey exported 426,000 tons of lemon, and
that number became more than 500,000 tons in 2014 which generates more than 300
Million Dollars. Numbers are pretty impressive no?
Lemon
production has 20 % share in all Citruses production of Turkey and there are 9
different types of Lemon in Turkey which are (I don’t know in English) Lamas
Limonu, Italyan Kara Limonu, Molla Mehmet limonu, Kibris Limonu, Kutdiken
Limonu, Enterdonat Limonu, Mayer Limonu, Lisbon Limonu ve Misket Limonu.
LEMON OIL
As I
mentioned before, lemon oil is one of the top using oils in Fragrance industry.
Many man & woman perfumes has lemon oil to provide fresh, fruity,
energizing top notes to perfumes. On the other hand it is widely used in
Industrial and Personal Care Fragrances too, you can easily see it in shampoos,
liquid or bar soaps, shower jells, detergents, softeners, dishwashing liquids,
bleaches etc.
But how do we obtain Lemon oil?
Like other
Citruses (Orange, Tangerine, Grapefruit, Bergamot etc.) most of the oil almost 98% is in its skin and obtained by COLD PRESS process.
As you can
see in the picture, oil can be distilled from Juice too but since juice has its
own value, mostly it is not “wasted” to produce oil.
There are
many efficient ways for Cold Press method, one of them is in this link; please
watch before keep reading.
In the
video, you saw lemons (or other citruses) are rounding crazily, that part is
where lemon oil extracted from skin.
The way is
simple, there are columns that has thousands of small tiny needles on and these
columns are rounding very fast and PEEL lemon skin by using these tiny needles. And
water taxiing on lemons to take all oils extracted.
Then OIL-WATER solution
separated by filtration & distillation processes. Here we go!! OIL
In picture
below, you can see PEELED mandarin and normal one (couldn’t find lemon sorry)
And this
picture is for you to imagine how much lemon needed to obtain a 200 KG drum of
lemon oil, yes!! you need almost 2,5 full trucks of lemon!!
Again and
again and again, one shiny little cute fruit. I am calling it “a God-Like
creature” which has a huge story behind and huge benefit from, I tried to
explain just a little bit of it. I hope you enjoyed.
So go to your kitchen now and take a little lemon
into your hand, before squeezing it look at it again, appreciate what it gives
you and
kiss it… o,O
No no leave it alone !!
See you.