Trade term
Degreening, and what ethylene actually changes
Degreening holds fruit in a room with a trace of ethylene so the green pigment in the skin breaks down and the orange underneath shows. It works on the peel and stops there. The juice inside is exactly as ripe, or as unripe, as it was when the fruit came off the tree.
The figures
| What it changes | Peel colour only |
|---|---|
| What it does not change | Juice, sugar, acid or maturity |
| When it is used | Early in the campaign, before natural colour break |
What it changes on an order
You buy at the start of the season
Ask whether the fruit was degreened. An orange skin in October may be the calendar or may be the room, and only one of those tells you about the juice.
You sell to a customer who checks maturity
The legal maturity test is on juice content, not colour, so degreened fruit still has to pass it on its own merits.
You are planning shelf life
Time in a degreening room is time the fruit is not being cooled, and treated fruit is generally handled as more perishable rather than less.
What this note does not settle
- We have not confirmed whether our fruit is degreened. The post-harvest treatment row is unconfirmed on all four varieties.
- This note explains the practice in general terms. What any particular packer does, and for how long, is a question for that packer.
Ethylene works on one layer and stops there
Green rind on a ripe orange is chlorophyll that warm autumn nights have not yet stripped out. Degreening finishes the job in a chamber, with a trace of ethylene, gentle warmth and high humidity, over a day or several. Colour changes. Sugars do not move, acid does not move, juice content does not move. The standard puts it in one sentence: citrus fruit meeting the maturity requirements may be degreened, and the treatment is permitted only where the other natural organoleptic characteristics are left alone.
Read that backwards and the opening weeks of a campaign make sense. The rule already lets an orange carry light green across a fifth of its surface and still comply, provided the juice content is there, so a degreened fruit has gone past compliance and into presentation. Your shopper reads colour as ripeness. That is the whole commercial reason the chamber exists.
What to ask, and what a photograph cannot tell you
Ask whether the lot was degreened, and ask in writing, because the answer changes how the rest of the chain should be planned. Fruit held under ethylene has spent extra days warm, humid and handled before it reaches your dock. Ask what the internal figures were before treatment, since those describe eating quality. And state what your own customer expects on colour, because a buyer who wants deep colour in the first weeks of a season is asking for the treatment whether he names it or not.
Whether our fruit is degreened is unconfirmed. The post-harvest treatment field sits open on all four variety datasheets, and it stays open until the grower answers it rather than being filled in with what a packhouse in this area would be expected to do. Ask before building a specification on the answer.
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.