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Review
. 2020 Mar 7:7:38.
doi: 10.1038/s41438-020-0277-5. eCollection 2020.

Rationale for reconsidering current regulations restricting use of hybrids in orange juice

Ed Stover  1 , Frederick G Gmitter Jr  2 , Jude Grosser  2 , Elizabeth Baldwin  1 , Guohong Albert Wu  3 , Jinhe Bai  1 , Yu Wang  2 , Peter Chaires  4 , Juan Carlos Motamayor  5
Affiliations
Review

Rationale for reconsidering current regulations restricting use of hybrids in orange juice

Ed Stover et al. Hortic Res. .

Abstract

Huanglongbing (HLB) is a disease that has devastated the Florida citrus industry, threatens the entire U.S. citrus industry, and globally is rapidly spreading. Florida's citrus production is 90% sweet orange, which is quite sensitive to HLB. The heavy reliance on sweet orange for Florida citrus production makes the industry especially vulnerable to diseases that are damaging to this type of citrus. Furthermore, 90% of Florida oranges are used in producing orange juice that is defined by a federal regulation known as the "orange juice standard", specifying that at least 90% of "orange juice" must be derived from Citrus sinensis. Genomic analyses definitively reveal that sweet orange is not a true species, but just one of many introgression hybrids of C. reticulata and C. maxima, with phenotypic diversity resulting from accumulated mutations in this single hybrid, the "sweet orange". No other fruit industry is limited by law to such a narrow genetic base. Fortunately, there are new citrus hybrids displaying reduced sensitivity to HLB, and in some cases they produce juice, alone or in blends, that consumers would recognize as "orange juice". Reconsidering current regulations on orange juice standards may permit use of such hybrids in "orange juice", providing greater latitude for commercialization of these hybrids, leading to higher-quality orange juice and a more sustainable Florida orange juice industry.

Keywords: Natural variation in plants; Plant breeding.

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Conflict of interest statement

Conflict of interestThe authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1. Pummelo introgression in mandarins and oranges.
a Pummelo and mandarin allelic proportion in the genomes of mandarins, oranges and pummelos, underlined by horizontal bars in red, yellow and green, respectively. The two progenitor species are denoted by PU = C. maxima (green) and MA = C. reticulata (red). The three-letter codes correspond to cultivar names and can be found in ref. (derived from Fig. 2a). Especially noteworthy for this paper: SWO = sweet orange (C. sinensis) and SO5 = ‘Ambersweet’ orange-like hybrid. b Local genetic ancestry of some representative cultivars (; derived from ED Fig. 2a). The chromosome designations are based on the haploid Clementine reference sequence
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