Packing and Shipping Citrus Fruits. 
MODERN METHODS OF PACKING ORANGES. 
By Lloyd S. Tenny, Pomologist. 
Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: 
More than ever before in fruit grow¬ 
ing, the quality of the product as it ar¬ 
rives on the market is of first importance. 
No matter how fine the fruit may be in 
the orchard or packing house if it reaches 
the market in a decayed or poor condi¬ 
tion, the grower ultimately loses money. 
The methods of growing the fruit are 
of prime importance for unless it is well 
grown, of fine quality on the tree, free 
from disease and insect pests, there is no 
hopes of it ever being in first-class condi¬ 
tion when it reaches the market. But it 
is not sufficient to have the fruit in per¬ 
fect condition as it hangs on the trees 
ready for the harvest. The processes of 
harvesting and packing are almost equally 
important with the methods of growing 
for unless these methods are correct, the 
handling of the fruit in packing may be 
the means directly or indirectly of much 
loss from decay in transit or on the mar¬ 
ket. The work of the department of ag¬ 
riculture in California and Florida on 
better methods of packing oranges is suf¬ 
ficiently well known for me not to dwell 
long on these results. The paper which 
was read at the last meeting of this so¬ 
ciety at Gainesville gives the data in full 
to that time. Suffice to say that the ex¬ 
periments all lead to the belief that the 
methods of picking and packing the or¬ 
anges very clearly indicate what the car¬ 
rying quality will be. 
The aim of our work in Florida dur¬ 
ing the past season has been rather more 
practical than experimental. We have 
selected certain picking gangs and pack¬ 
ing houses where we have had virtually 
full control of the different processes to 
determine if careful methods can be 
adopted on a commercial scale and to 
learn how the cost of the different pro¬ 
cesses under these conditions compare 
with the rougher methods. Chief, too, in 
our work, was a desire to know how the 
fruit handled in this improved way car¬ 
ried to market. 
♦ 
This work is not completed as yet, and 
I shall reserve until some future time the 
very encouraging results which we ob¬ 
tained. We want you to know, however, 
that it has been possible to train a pick¬ 
ing gang to do good work. It has been 
possible to eliminate much, if not all of 
the rough handling in the packing-house 
and best of all we found that fruit picked 
and packed under our own supervision 
had splendid carrying quality and held 
