Defect and tolerance
Anthracnose, and the dead wood above the fruit
Anthracnose reaches an orange by falling on it. The fungus colonises weakened twigs and old dead wood up in the canopy, and spores wash down onto whatever is hanging underneath, which is why the streaks it leaves on mature fruit are called tear stains. Read them as a report on the state of a grove rather than on the packhouse.
The figures
| The fungus | Colletotrichum gloeosporioides |
|---|---|
| Where it sits before it reaches fruit | Weakened twigs and old dead wood, mainly on stressed trees |
| How it gets onto the fruit | Spores drip down onto the fruit below and infect the rind |
| On mature fruit | Brown to black streaks, known as tear stains |
| On immature fruit | Dull reddish to green streaks |
| What else it does on the tree | Twig dieback and premature leaf drop |
| Coverage in the Spanish reference manual | The IRTA manual of rots and disorders of oranges and mandarins carries no entry for it |
| Pruning and canopy work on our plots | Not documented |
What it changes on an order
You are looking at a new grower for the first time
Tear stains describe how a canopy has been kept, and that is information no certificate carries. A sample of fruit tells you about pruning and about stress on the trees, which is worth more than most first meetings produce.
You buy at the end of the campaign
The same infection presents differently as fruit matures, dull and reddish early and dark late. A specification written around one description will misread the other, and the fruit changes under it without anyone moving.
You write defects into an order by name
The marketing standard does not use this word, so naming it tells a packhouse what you are looking at and does not give either of you a tolerance. Ask how their graders sort it before the name goes into writing.
What this note does not settle
- The description here comes from Californian pest management guidance. The Spanish reference manual for post-harvest rots does not carry an entry for it, and that absence is worth weighing rather than ignoring.
- Several citrus defects show up as streaks or dark marks on the rind and the reference literature files them under quite different causes. A name given to one on a dock is a working hypothesis until somebody qualified looks.
- A stain is a sign of conditions in an orchard and not proof of them. Weather and canopy density both leave marks that argue with each other.
- We have no documented pruning or canopy management on our plots and no confirmed post-harvest treatment, so we cannot tell you how our own fruit behaves on this.
Source: UC IPM Pest Management Guidelines, Anthracnose on citrus, IRTA, Manual descriptivo de podredumbres y fisiopatías en naranjas y mandarinas
Gravity, and what it carries down
A defect that arrives from above behaves unlike the rest of them. The fungus does its real work in the wood, in twigs that weakened and branches that died and were never cut out, and the fruit is whatever happens to be hanging underneath when rain moves the spores down. No packing line caused this. No packing line undoes it either.
Which makes the marks readable in a way that most defects are not. A canopy full of old dead wood is a canopy nobody has pruned, and pruning is one of the few orchard practices a buyer can ask about and get a straight answer to. So ask. The reply tells you more about the next three seasons than the sample on the bench does.
One infection, two descriptions
Fruit picked early and fruit picked late do not present this the same way. Early, the streaks are dull and run reddish or greenish. Later they darken towards brown and black. A specification written from a photograph taken at the start of the campaign will not match a load that leaves in February, and neither side will have done a single thing wrong.
A second wrinkle belongs in any conversation about it. The Spanish reference manual for post-harvest rots and disorders has no entry for this at all, which suggests it sits differently in this circuit than in the one the Californian guidance describes. Canopy records of our own do not exist to set beside either source. Put the question to whoever is selling, and treat a confident answer with some suspicion.
Talk to the grower
Tell us the variety, the sizes and the delivery week you need. You get a delivered price and what we can commit to in writing, from the person who picks the fruit.
The grower handles enquiries. Response times are still to be confirmed.