Lemon Oil, Lemon & Turkey

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.