Handling, Distributing, and Sale of Fruit 213 



and packing of their products, and to increase the effi- 

 ciency in their distribution and sale. There is an enor- 

 mous loss in the annual value of the fruit crop as a result 

 of bad physical handling in preparing it for market. It is 

 probably not overstating it to say that there is an average 

 loss of not less than twenty per cent from this cause in 

 picking, hauling, grading, and packing and preparing the 

 fruit for shipment. The bruising of the fruit detracts 

 from its appearance, and where the skin is punctured it 

 makes it susceptible to decays that cannot enter a healthy, 

 unbroken skin. This enormous annual economic loss can 

 be prevented by following a few simple conservation 

 methods. 



Bad Handling and the Fruit-Rots 



The common soft-rot of apples, peaches, small fruits, 

 and citrus fruits is usually caused by molds that gain en- 

 trance through abrasions in the skin or when the fruit is 

 physiologically weakened. An unbroken skin is resistant 

 to these fungi, but when the skin is broken the decay de- 

 velops rapidly if there are present moisture and heat 

 enough to germinate the spores of the fungi and start 

 them into growth. Few have any idea of the amount of 

 fruit that is lost by improper handling. It is not un- 

 common to find twenty per cent of the apples in a con- 

 signment with punctures through the skin. In cherry 

 picking, the flesh around the stem is frequently broken. 

 With small fruits careless pickers often injure one-half of 

 the berries. Twenty-five per cent of the peaches are fre- 

 quently injured. In citrus fruits the abrasions may vary 

 from five to seventy-five per cent caused by the clippers 



