38 
FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 
from 3 to 6 per cent, a month. It is 
greatest in the riper fruit, and under the 
dry conditions which have obtained dur¬ 
ing most of April. The decay has also 
increased progressively, and in the grape¬ 
fruit picked in February and March has 
been very high. Practically none of this 
decay has been blue mold, and no stem- 
end rot has developed except in a few 
lots of melanosed fruit. The trouble at 
Cocoanut Grove was caused by a brown 
decay which I have never seen before on 
citrus fruit. Several specimens have 
been sent to the mycologist of the Bureau 
of Plant Industry, and some information 
on the subject will be forthcoming before 
another season’s work is begun. This 
decay spreads very rapidly by contact; 
an experiment made at Cocoanut 
Grove indicates that it may be possible to 
control it by dipping the fruit in a cop¬ 
per sulphate solution. I am of the opin¬ 
ion, however, that it will not develop at a 
reasonably low temperature, as very lit¬ 
tle of it appeared the early part of the 
season, or in the fruit picked in Novem¬ 
ber, December and January. It seems 
to be essential that some method be de¬ 
vised to cool the storage rooms to a tem¬ 
perature at least as low as 6o degrees, F. 
This has been done at Winter Park 
for the past month. The storage room 
there is equipped with an overhead ice 
room, which will hold several hundred 
pounds of ice. The fruit in the room 
is cooled by the gravity circulation of 
the air chilled by the ice above. This 
room will hold practically a car of packed 
fruit, but there are probably not over 
fifty boxes in it at present. To keep a 
room of that size and with that quantity 
of fruit in the neighborhood of 6o de¬ 
grees, F., requires the meltage of about 
ioo pounds of ice each twenty-four hours. 
This amount, of course, will vary greatly 
under different conditions. As the fruit 
in storage at Winter Park has only been 
held for one month under this lower tem¬ 
perature, it is impossible to say now 
whether or not this method is of marked 
benefit. 
COMPARISON OF GRAPEFRUIT PICKED AT 
DIFFERENT STAGES OF MATURITY. 
Except for decay, there seems to be 
little difference in the condition of fruit 
picked in February and March, as com¬ 
pared with that picked in November and 
December. The later fruit, of 'course, 
has not had as severe a storage test as 
that picked earlier. At present its con¬ 
dition is slightly poorer than that of the 
early fruit after a similar period in sto¬ 
rage. Part of this is probably due to 
the somewhat higher temperatures dur¬ 
ing the last two months, and to the lower 
humidity during most of the present 
month. There are two factors with re¬ 
gard to time of picking that will have to 
be taken into consideration, if grapefruit 
storage becomes a commercial practice. 
The first is the time when the fruit is in 
the best condition for long storage; the 
second is the desirability of picking it 
when it has reached a marketable size. A 
grower trying to hold grapefruit for a 
June or July market would naturally 
keep it on the trees as long as possible. 
It may be that it will be found advisable 
to pick the fruit a month or two before 
the extreme limit to which it can be held 
on the trees, in order to get the most de- 
