By Clint Thompson and Nick Papagni
The Georgia Citrus Association’s trip to California last week allowed industry leaders to look for opportunities to advance citrus in the cold-hardy region. One of the focuses was learning about the different varieties produced in California that could have a potential future in the Southeast.
Lindy Savelle, executive director of the Georgia Citrus Association who helped organize the trip, said the group learned more about was clementines, which are grown in California under netting to prevent seeds.
“We’ve got one grower — maybe two — that have a handful of clementines. They were talking about pulling them up because they’re so seedy,” said Savelle. “I said, ‘Don’t do that. Let’s go to California and see what they do to prevent seed.’”
If bees achieve cross pollination in citrus crops, it leads to seeds in easy-peel fruit. Netting prevents cross pollination, leading to seedless citrus which is much more desired by consumers.
“Sure, it’s going to cost you some money to put that netting over it, and it’s going to be a lot of work. But if you’ve already got an 8- to 10-year-old tree that produces, you’ve got to take that one more step to net the tree to keep the seed out,” Savelle said. “That’s one we definitely need to increase, and we’ve had people tell us before we need to be growing Clemenules. Nobody wants to buy a piece of fruit that has seed, and we never even knew about netting until we came to California.”
Georgia citrus growers continue to look to expand production beyond the standard satsuma mandarins, which enabled the industry to find its footing in Georgia. Savelle said growers need to be selective in what varieties they choose to pursue.
“We took a niche market with satsumas and forced it to be a commercial market,” Savelle noted. “Satsumas are wonderful. If we could get every child in the state of Georgia to have satsumas when they’re available, that would be wonderful. I think Georgia Grown can help us with that. But it is not a commercially viable product.
“It’s an easy peel and it’s seedless, but it doesn’t stay on the shelf very long. It’s not easy to ship. There’s a lot of negatives with satsumas. We’re going to have to focus on the local market with our satsumas but dream about being part of a bigger plan. I think coming here to California, we clearly understand that there’s only a few varieties we need to be growing. We don’t need to be growing 27 different varieties.”
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