Australian citrus cage

This year's Australian citrus export season is underway in earnest, but the big fear this year is that, on the back of a lighter crop of large sized fruit, there may not be enough fruit to go round.

After a heatwave in November last year, Australian growers were left with a light navel orange crop, and a size profile much larger than usual, which many observers predicted would be a problem for Asian markets which traditionally prefer smaller navels.

"Volumes are down to most markets because fruit size is larger than usual, and markets which prefer smaller fruit cannot be supplied," confirmed Citrus Australia CEO Judith Damiani.

"But despite this larger size, our fruit eating quality is exceptional this season. This is one of our main competitive advantages over other Southern Hemisphere producers.

"Into the future, we aim to command a premium for quality in higher-returning markets such as Japan," Ms Damiani said.

Other key industry figures agree with this assessment, and say the larger size profile of this year's fruit has been a problem across the board.

"The crop is down by at least half and the size is a bit of a problem. We're heavy on 56s and customers need more 72s," Delica's Murray McCallum told Fruitnet.com.

"Markets in South East Asia, like Thailand - they like the smaller fruit and there is none."

A full report on this year's Australian citrus season will appear in the July/August edition of Asiafruit Magazine.