In this context, the Committee held the Detection and identification of frost damage in citrus fruits workshops, which was dictated by the Agricultural Inspector of the Office of the Agricultural Commissioner of Monterey, California, Robert Milner.
The workshops were held in August in Santiago and Coquimbo and were attended by more than 130 people. Their goal was to train the different players in the industry to prevent fruit with frost damage from being exported and reaching the final consumer.
In his presentation, Milner explained the regulations and standards that the US citrus industry has to prevent fruit with frost damage from reaching the final consumer. In addition, he analyzed samples of oranges, lemons, and mandarins with different degrees of damage so that the attendees could detect, identify and determine the percentage of damage they had.
Frost damage can be evaluated 7 to 10 days after the frost occurs and they mainly depend on the temperature, exposure length, species, and fruit maturity stage. Technicians and professionals of the producing companies periodically carry out evaluations in the field until they are certain that the fruit hasn't been affected by the frosts. These measures have already been applied in previous seasons with very good results.
Source: Chile's Citrus Committee-ASOEX
