Defect and tolerance
Handling damage on citrus, healed or fresh
The citrus standard bars bruising outright and permits healed mechanical damage in both graded classes. The same knock therefore falls on either side of that line, depending on whether the rind had time to cork over. At destination, the age of a mark decides more than its size does.
The figures
| The minimum requirement | Free of bruising and of extensive healed overcuts |
|---|---|
| The permitted defect | Healed defects due to a mechanical cause such as hail damage, rubbing or damage from handling |
| Class I | The permitted version carries the qualifier slight |
| Class II | The same defects, without that qualifier |
| Where abrasion is produced | At picking, on transfer, and along the grading and packing line |
| A local expression of it | Zebra skin, dark necrotic streaks on the flavedo of early fruit, likeliest when picking falls two to four days after rain that ended a dry spell |
| What amplifies it | Ethylene degreening raises the incidence of abrasion marks |
What it changes on an order
You unload and the marks look fresh
Fresh means recent, and recent means the transport leg or the unloading itself. The standard puts the argument on timing, and a dated photograph answers timing far better than a defect count does.
You buy early fruit that has been degreened
The chamber does not cause the abrasion, it develops it. A lot that was acceptable on the grading line can present worse after degreening without anyone having touched it again.
You run your own repacking line
Every transfer is another opportunity to add a fresh mark to fruit that arrived sound. An inspection before you repack is the only thing that keeps what arrived separate from what you made.
What this note does not settle
- Healed against fresh is a judgement made by eye, and the standard offers no definition of the boundary between them.
- Some handling damage expresses itself later as a different disorder entirely, so two marks with one cause can end up graded under two clauses.
- We have no measurement of how our own fruit travels and no confirmed handling protocol we could describe to you.
Source: Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2023/2429, Annex I Part B Part 2 (specific marketing standard for citrus fruit), IRTA, Manual descriptivo de podredumbres y fisiopatías en naranjas y mandarinas
One word decides which clause applies
Read the two lines together and the whole defect resolves itself. Fruit must be free of bruising, says the list of minimum requirements. Healed defects from a mechanical cause are permitted, says the class definition, offering damage from handling as its example. The two coexist because of a single qualifier, and everything a receiver has to determine hangs on whether that qualifier applies.
Corking over takes time. A rub from the orchard in November arrives dry, brown and sealed. A rub that happened as the pallet came off the trailer arrives soft and open. Anyone who has looked at a hundred boxes can separate them, and the standard leans on that ability without ever defining it.
Proving when, rather than proving how much
Because the qualifier is about age, the evidence worth gathering is about timing. Photographs with a visible date, taken as the pallet comes apart rather than after it has been sorted, are worth more than a careful defect count made three days later. A count establishes scale. The photographs establish sequence, and sequence is what the wording turns on.
There is a second reason to inspect before touching anything. Your own transfers make fresh marks too, and a load that arrived with healed scars can acquire open ones on your line inside an hour. Inspecting first keeps the two populations apart, which protects a legitimate claim as much as it protects your supplier.
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.