Defect and tolerance
Oleocellosis, the mark that surfaces after loading
Oleocellosis is a rind injury caused by peel oil escaping from burst oil glands and killing the cells around them. The rupture happens when turgid or wet fruit is handled at picking. The stain darkens over the following days, which is why a load that left clean can show it on arrival.
The figures
| Other names | Oil spotting, citrus oil spot, oleocelosis |
|---|---|
| What ruptures | The oil glands of the flavedo, releasing peel oil that is phytotoxic to the cells beside them |
| When the injury happens | At picking and handling, on turgid fruit or fruit wet from rain, dew or fog |
| When it becomes visible | Over the following days, often only after degreening or after dispatch |
| How it looks | Greenish brown spots with the oil glands standing out; on green fruit the damaged areas fail to colour during degreening |
| Nearest clause in the standard | Skin defects, allowed slight in Class I and allowed in Class II, in both cases only where the flesh is unaffected |
| What it opens the door to | Cells killed by the oil are readily colonised by fungi |
What it changes on an order
You are opening a load you did not pack
A stain that keeps darkening makes both sides right at once. The grower saw clean fruit, you are looking at marked fruit, and neither observation is wrong. Date your photographs, because the evidence is still changing while you argue about it.
You buy early fruit that goes through a degreening chamber
Injured rind does not take on colour. Fruit that looked acceptable going into the chamber comes out with pale patches where the glands broke, so the chamber reveals a defect it did not cause.
You are drafting an acceptance specification
Presence settles nothing here, because almost any commercial lot carries some. Write a limit on the area of rind affected and on the number of fruit per sample, and you have something two people can check.
What this note does not settle
- The standard never uses the word oleocellosis. Where a marked fruit lands depends on how an inspector reads extent, and two inspectors reading the same box can land in different places.
- This note describes the disorder and what the standard says about skin defects. It is not a ruling on any particular consignment or a statement of what anyone owes.
- We hold no measurement of how our own fruit behaves and no confirmed post-harvest treatment record. Both fields are open with the grower.
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, Cronje et al., Oleocellosis incidence in citrus fruit in response to mechanical injuries
Injury and symptom fall on different days
Everything that matters about this defect follows from a gap in time. The oil glands break while the fruit is being handled, and the cells around them die afterwards, slowly, as the released oil does its work. A picker who bruised nothing and a packer who saw clean fruit are both telling the truth. So is the receiver looking at brown patches four days later. Very few disputes on a citrus pallet have that shape, and recognising it early takes a lot of heat out of the conversation.
Wet fruit makes it worse, and so does fruit that is full of water. Rain, dew or a foggy morning leave the rind turgid, and turgid rind gives up its oil under pressure that dry rind would shrug off. Growers who wait for the canopy to dry before sending crews out are managing this and nothing else. When a supplier tells you they stopped picking for half a morning, that is the reason.
Writing it into a specification that can be checked
Presence proves nothing, because commercial fruit carries some of it almost everywhere. A line saying free from oil spotting is a line no packhouse can meet and no inspector can measure, so both will quietly ignore it. Give the limit a shape instead. How much of a rind may be affected before a fruit counts against you, and how many such fruit a sample of a given size may hold. Now two people standing at the same pallet can reach the same answer.
Harvest conditions predict this better than anything downstream of them, so ask about those as well. On our side that record does not exist yet, and neither does any post-harvest treatment detail, which means we would be guessing if we answered. Where a field is open we say it is open, and you decide what weight the gap deserves before you buy.
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.