48 BULLETIN 63, TJ. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
of the picking and packing crews. The men should be paid by the day instead of 
by the box, and a conscientious foreman should carefully oversee the work of the indi- 
vidual pickers. The bureau experiments prove that it is possible to train workmen 
to use more care and to greatly reduce their percentage of imperfections. 
More than 90 experimental shipments of oranges were made from Florida in 1910-11, 
and 65 were sent out in 1911-12, including fruit from every section of the State and 
from good, poor, and average houses. Plate XV illustrates the condition in which 
some of these lots arrived in Washington. The carefully picked, graded, and packed 
fruit showed 4 per cent of decay on arrival, the commercially picked but carefully 
graded and packed fruit showed 35.6 per cent, and the commercially handled fruit 
had 65.9 per cent. After one week these percentages had increased to 4 per cent, 46 
per cent, and 71.6 per cent, respectively; after two weeks they were 11.5 per cent, 
54 per cent, and 72.2 per cent; and after three weeks, 11.5 per cent, 57.1 per cent, 
and 72.2 per cent. 
The carefully handled fruit arrived in Washington during both seasons with less 
than 1 per cent of decay, or an average for the two years of 0.6 per cent for all the 
experimental shipments. The fruit handled under commercial conditions through- 
out had developed more than twice as much decay by the first inspection as occurred 
in the carefully handled fruit at the end of three weeks. 
That commercial handling may also be careful handling is demonstrated by the fact 
that during both seasons the average percentage of decay in the commercial fruit 
shipped from 12 houses using care was almost as low as the average for any of the lota 
carefully handled by the bureau workers. In one packing house, where during 
1910-11 the percentage of decay in the commercially handled fruit reached 15.8 per 
cent after holding for three weeks in Washington, the handling operations were so 
improved by the adoption of the bureau methods that during 1911-12 only 4.1 per 
cent of decay developed in the commercially handled fruit at the end of the same 
period. 
It has been the general experience that blue-mold decay is more prevalent in 
Florida during the early months of the shipping season than it is later. All of the 
fruit carefully handled by the bureau workers, even that shipped during December, 
showed much less decay after three weeks in market than the commercial shipments 
during February showed on arrival. The shipping experiments showed that care- 
fully handled fruit may be "cured " without serious loss, but that whenever the fruit 
has been appreciably damaged in the course of its preparation for shipment, decay is 
materially greater in the delayed lots. 
Although not more than 1 per cent of the total shipments of citrus fruits had pre- 
viously been iced, during 1912-13 a considerable number of commercial shipments 
were sent north under refrigeration. No systematic study was made of the behavior 
of fruit of the same grade and quality under the two systems of shipment, but the 
general opinion seems to prevail among shippers that the icing resulted in material 
benefit to the fruit. The investigations of the Bureau of Plant Industry have demon- 
strated, however, that Florida oranges may be transported to market under ventilation 
with a minimum loss from decay, even during periods of warm and humid weather, 
if sufficient care is used to preserve the skin of the fruit in an unbroken condition. 
CONCLUSIONS. 
In the light of the principles established by the workers of the Department of Agri- 
culture in the investigations and experiments of the past seven seasons, viz, that the 
condition of the fruit after arrival in market depends largely upon the character of the 
work done in grove and packing house, and that it is possible to so conduct the opera- 
tions of picking, packing, and shipping as to inflict a minimum of mechanical injuries 
