Causes of Decay of Florida Oranges in Transit 
to Market 
A Review of the Work of the U. S. Department of Agriculture in Florida 1907- 
1910. 
A. V. Stubenrauch. 
In Charge of Fruit Transportation and Storage Investigations, U. S. Department of Agricul¬ 
ture. 
Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen : 
I regret that my former associate, Mr. 
Lloyd S. Tenny, is not able to attend this 
meeting and give an account of the inves¬ 
tigations of the causes of decay of or¬ 
anges in transit from Florida. Mr. Ten¬ 
ny had charge of this work since it was 
started four years ago, and is fully con¬ 
versant with every part of it. He it was 
who planned the experiments and demon¬ 
strations and it is largely due to his ef¬ 
forts that the work owes its progress. I 
am not as familiar with the work of the 
Bureau of Plant Industry in Florida as 
was Mr. Tenny. I have therefore to re¬ 
ly upon the data and information accu¬ 
mulated by others, and this paper, then, 
will have to be mostly in the nature of a 
review of what has been done and an ac¬ 
count of what is planned for the future. 
The citrus transportation investigations 
of the Bureau of Plant Industry were be¬ 
gun seven years ago in California. For 
some time prior to that time the orange 
growers of California urged the bureau 
to begin an investigation of the causes of 
the decay of their fruit in transit. It was 
estimated that an average of 5 per cent, 
of the entire crop shipped out decayed 
en route, thus entailing an enormous loss 
to the growers. The progress and re¬ 
sults of these California investigations are 
perhaps familiar to most of the members 
of the Florida Society. The work was 
published as Bulletin No. 123 of the Bu¬ 
reau of Plant Industry. 
The success of the California investi¬ 
gations led to requests for a similar line 
of work in Florida. In response to these 
requests M,r. Tenny was delegated to car¬ 
ry out the investigations in the Florida 
citrus districts and he and a number of 
associates have been at work and have 
given accounts of the progress of the 
work in papers read before the annual 
meetings of this society. 
The ultimate aim of fruit growing is 
profit—to sell the crop at a profit. It fol¬ 
lows that any investigations which have 
