Bulletin 229, Diseases of Citrus in Florida


should be remembered that every injured fruit is potentially a
decayed fruit.
 In the packinghouse the fruit should be unloaded and handled
carefully. It should not be allowed to come into contact with
sharp edges of bins or machinery. Washers and bins should be
so constructed that the fruit is not crowded or given violent mo-
tion. The packers should wear gloves to avoid injuring the
fruit with their fingernails. Care should be taken not to injure
the fruit when putting the covers on the boxes.*
 2. Surface Dryness of the Fruit:-Fruit should not be picked
while it is wet from rain or dew and it should be thoroughly
dried before being wrapped and packed. Effort should be made
to avoid sudden changes of temperature that produce sweating
of the fruit after it is boxed.
 3. Sanitation in the Packinghouse:-The blue and green mold
fungi propagate on injured fruit, which may constitute a source
of infection regardless of whether it occurs in the grove or pack-
inghouse or on the market. Crushed and cull fruit should be
removed promptly from the packinghouse, since such fruit left
lying about furnishes ideal conditions for the growth and mul-
tiplication of these fungi. For the same reason, moldy or rotten
fruit should not be allowed to go into the soaking tank. The
wash water should be renewed frequently. The field boxes
should be returned in a clean condition and good state of repair.
 4. Antiseptic Treatment of the Fruit:-A number of different
chemicals have been used in past years for disinfecting fruit
and killing the spores of decay-producing fungi after it has been
scrubbed and washed. While some measure of success has been
attained, the results in general have not been sufficiently satis-
factory to bring about the general use of any of these substances
until recently. Within the past few years, however, interest
has been renewed in this problem and borax and sodium bicar-
bonate have come into widespread commercial use for this pur-
pose. While these chemical treatments are used primarily for
mold control, Fulton has found that there may also be a material
reduction in stem-end rot following their use. According to Ful-
ton, at the best, they can be expected to reduce losses to one-
half or one-third of what they would be otherwise. It cannot

 *Further discussion of the handling of fruit in relation to the preven-
 tion of decay will be found in the section on "Decay of citrus fruit in transit
 and on the market" (see page 131).