Trade term
Flavedo, and why one thin layer decides a sale
The flavedo is the coloured outer layer of the peel, a fraction of a millimetre thick, and it holds the pigment, the oil glands and almost every mark a buyer will ever see. Nearly every visual judgement made about citrus is a judgement about this one layer and not about the fruit.
The figures
| What it is | The coloured outer layer of the peel |
|---|---|
| What it carries | Pigment and the oil glands |
| What it is not | Any indication of the juice inside |
What it changes on an order
You are rejecting on appearance
Nearly all of what you are looking at sits in this layer, and damage to it says very little about how the fruit eats.
You sell into food service
Where the peel is discarded, flavedo marks cost you nothing and are worth negotiating on rather than rejecting.
You sell zest or whole fruit
Then this layer is the product, and the same mark that a juice buyer ignores is the whole argument.
What this note does not settle
- A visual grade is set by the marketing standard, and this note explains the anatomy rather than the tolerances.
- How our own fruit presents is not something we publish, because we have not yet graded a campaign under these terms.
Source: University of California Riverside, Citrus Variety Collection
Everything you judge by eye happens in one layer
The flavedo is the outer coloured skin, a fraction of the thickness of the white beneath it, and it holds the two things that decide a sale by appearance: the pigments that give the fruit its colour and the glands that hold its essential oil. Colour, gloss, russet, oil spotting, wax, the mark a fingernail leaves. Every judgement your intake team makes from three paces is a judgement about this layer.
It is also the layer that post-harvest work acts on. Ethylene destroys chlorophyll here. Coatings sit on top of it, fungicide lands on it, and whatever a residue analysis finds has concentrated in it. The layer that sells the fruit carries most of the chemical history of the fruit, and that coincidence is worth knowing when a customer of yours uses peel.
A perfect rind tells you nothing about the inside
Appearance gets read as a summary of quality because it is the only thing visible without destroying a sample. It summarises nothing. Granulation, a poor ratio, off flavours from an over thick coating and low juice content all sit behind an intact, glossy skin, and a pallet passes a visual intake check with every one of them undetected.
Cut fruit at intake. Two or three from separate pallets, chosen by you rather than handed to you, tasted as well as looked at. Keep the visual check for what it does well, which is catching handling damage, decay and the marks of a rough journey. For anything inside the fruit, the rind is a wrapper and nothing more.
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.