Trade term
Granulation, the fault that survives every check
Granulation dries and hardens the juice vesicles inside the fruit while the outside stays perfect. There is no mark on the peel, no softness in the hand and no way to sort for it on a line. It is found by cutting fruit open, which means it is found by sampling and never by looking.
The figures
| Where it happens | Inside the fruit, in the juice vesicles |
|---|---|
| Visible on the peel | No |
| How it is detected | By cutting fruit open |
What it changes on an order
You inspect on arrival
A visual check cannot find this. If it matters to you, the inspection has to include cutting a sample, and that has to be agreed.
You buy late in a window
Fruit held longer on the tree is generally the fruit where this is discussed, which makes the picking date part of the conversation.
You are agreeing an acceptance procedure
Say how many fruits get cut and from where in the pallet. An unspecified sample is an argument waiting to happen.
What this note does not settle
- We have no incidence data of our own for this. Nothing of ours has been graded for it.
- This note describes what the condition is. Whether it is a contractual defect on your order is decided by what you agreed, not by this page.
Source: University of California Riverside, Citrus Variety Collection
The fault that survives every visual check
Granulation is what happens when the juice vesicles inside the segments gel and harden instead of bursting. The sacs turn firm, pale and dry, the fruit gives up less juice, and it eats like cotton wool. Seen from outside, a granulated orange looks like any other orange. The rind is intact, the colour is right, the weight is close, and detecting it without cutting the fruit has been a research problem serious enough to put people to work on X-ray imaging.
It concentrates where the money is. The largest fruit on a tree carries the highest risk, along with fruit left hanging late in the season and fruit off young, vigorous trees on certain rootstocks. A buyer paying a premium for the biggest size codes is buying in the part of the distribution where this defect lives, which is an uncomfortable thing to learn from a customer instead of from a supplier.
Cut, squeeze, and write down what you did
Build it into the receiving routine. Take fruit from several pallets, halve them across the equator, hold the cut face to the light, then squeeze a half and judge what runs out. It takes a couple of minutes and nothing else in a normal intake finds this. Grading under the marketing standard rests on what an inspector can see, and its tolerances are written around defects on the outside of the fruit.
Where juice yield is the point of the purchase, agree that check before the fruit ships rather than after it lands. Specify how many fruits, drawn from where, and what result ends the conversation. We hold no granulation data and no juice yield measurement of our own, so both stay open on the datasheets.
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.