In several Spanish-speaking countries in South America, walnuts from Brazil are called chestnuts from Brazil, walnuts from Brazil, or chestnuts from Pará (or Para). In Brazil, they are more commonly called castanha-do-Pará (meaning chestnuts from Pará in Portuguese), and other names are also used. Despite their name, the most important exporter of nuts in Brazil is not Brazil but Bolivia, where they are called almonds. In Brazil, these nuts are called Castanhas-do-Pará (literally chestnuts from Pará), but the people of Acre call them Castanhas-do-Acre instead.
Indigenous names include juvia in the Orinoco area and sapucaia in the rest of Brazil. Collectors known as chestnut trees build temporary camps to have better access to trees (since they are located in remote, unexploited areas) and wander through the jungle in search of fallen nuts. Brazil's walnut trees produce fruit almost exclusively in virgin forests, since altered forests lack the large-bodied bees that are the only ones capable of pollinating the tree's flowers (Nelson et al. Every year, about 20,000 metric tons of walnuts are harvested from Brazil, of which Bolivia accounts for about 50 percent, Brazil about 40 percent and Peru about ten percent (2000 estimates) (Collinson et al.
The Brazilian nut itself is just one of what I estimate are about 250 species of that family found in the forests of Central and South America. The Brazil nut is a large tree, reaching 30 to 45 meters (100 to 150 feet) in height and 1 to 2 meters (3 to 6.5 feet) in trunk diameter, and is among the largest trees in the Amazon rainforest. Brazil nuts are also a rich source of vitamin B1 and vitamin E, a good source of niacin and calcium, and a source of iron (Bender and Bender 200). The flower of the Brazil nut is large, approximately two inches in diameter and fleshy, and the male part of the flower has a structure not found in any other plant family in the world.
Brazil's walnut tree is vital for the conservation of the region's rainforests because it only grows in an unexploited ecosystem, where there is a significant concentration of biodiversity. The fruit itself is a large capsule 10 to 15 centimeters in diameter that resembles a coconut endocarp in size and weighs 2 to 3 kilograms. For the past 35 years, my research has focused on the classification and ecology of species in the Brazilian walnut family. The Brazil nut effect describes the tendency of larger products to occupy the top of a mix of products of various sizes but with similar densities, such as Brazil nuts mixed with peanuts.
Then, the centers of the seeds, shaped like a nut, are dried or roasted for consumption, or cold pressed to extract the oil for use in skin care and other products. Recommended dietary doses), although the amount of selenium in batches of nuts varies greatly (Chang et al. In botanical terminology, a nut is a type of fruit, so the Brazilian nut would have more appropriately received the name “seed of Brazil”. In 1980, annual production was around 40,000 tons per year in Brazil alone, and in 1970 Brazil harvested 104,487 tons of nuts (Mori 199).
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