Going nuts over "nuts" and "seeds"

[cmrn-rhi]

After looking over the nut/seed milk (and other nut/seed food products) for the plant milk discussion I proposed a hierarchy (see below) that got me thinking we need to revisit the nut food product [FOODON:00001172] and plant seed food product [FOODON:00001173] (no definition currently) branches. We currently have "almond food product" under "nut food product" when it is a drupe "seed" not a true nut and nuts (true or not) are also not being classified as seeds. The current definition of "nut food product" appears to be using nut descriptively (so a lot of things that aren't botanically nuts are labelled nuts, even references peanuts which are a legume seed) so maybe we should make it explicit on whether we are being descriptive/culinary (nuts whenever the label is applied to a non-nut) or prescriptive (true nuts only) or find away to satisfy both uses in the polyhierarchy? Thought it might be worth discussing in the Joint Food Ontology workgroup.

Example of a seed and nut product hierarchy (updated to remove unnecessary "milk" from labels - 2023/07/06)

• plant food product
  • seed(which includes seeds of drupes, seeds/beans of legumes, true nuts, etc.)
    • nut (single seed in a shell, all nuts are seeds)
      • hemp
      • hazelnut
    • sunflower seed
    • cashew
    • almond
    • pistachio
    • coconut
    • pecan
    • walnut
    • peanut
    • soybean
      • soybean

[maweber-bia]

Hi, indeed the distinction is not always clear with respect to what is the botanic description or culinary term (see also discussion in issue#218)

I think it is a good point to include all "seeds" in the definition

For information, it is also the case in FoodEX2 where the "seed" category encompasses different types of botanical sources

[cmrn-rhi]

2022.11.10 - FoodOn Curation Meeting:

So we've decided to move forward the following hierarchy (list includes new and existing terms):

• botanical fruit food product
  • drupe food product
  • legume food product
  • seed food product (which includes seeds of drupes, seeds/beans of legumes, true nuts, etc.)
    • nut food product (true nuts = single seed in a shell, all nuts are seeds)
    • culinary nut food product (includes true nuts and non-true nuts)
    • tree nut food product (a common allergen category that isn't limited to true nuts)
    • cereal grain food product

Many items would be polyhierarchical in this branch. Examples:

• "almond food product" would go under "seed", "drupe", "culinary nut", "tree nut" food products.
• "peanut food product" would go under "seed", "legume", and "culinary nut" food products.
• "hazelnut food product" would go under "nut", "culinary nut", and "tree nut" food products.

Meeting participants please let me know if I made any misinterpretations of our discussion!

[ddooley]

Looks perfect to me!

[ddooley]

Further question is about whether whole (true) nut should reference "[nut] kernel", synonym [nut]. Probably. (Means we shouldn't have any terms that are just "[nut]"

Then we'll need all true nuts to have a "[nut] kernel (with shell)" sibling class.

(cashew and brazil nuts are not true nuts, handle separately - its a seed (drupe fruit) )

[ddooley]

Also many (all?) nuts have a protective outer covering of a seed; the seed coat, called the "testa" - Rhiannon looked it up. So removing that is a process in some nuts, like peanuts. So we need to offer terms with and without that in at least some cases.