Citrus growers in Florida are facing up to another night of freezing weather more than a week after a damaging cold snap began, as temperatures plummet to record lows in some areas of the US state.
Information released over the weekend suggested that Florida's crop had avoided any widespread damage, but there were reports of some fruit in the northern growing areas being hit by the chill - and the worst could still be yet to come.
According to Reuters, some of the most extensively hit areas so far had been Lake County, southern Marion County and northern Polk country, with the low temperatures prompting a rush by growers to get the fruit off of trees.
'There are no reports of catastrophic damage at this point,' Florida Citrus Mutual's Andrew Meadows told the news agency. 'We came through in certain areas - I've heard some positive comments from some big growers in all of our growing regions, but again there are certainly reports of colder, lower-lying areas that sustained some damage.
However, Alan Reppert, a senior meteorologist at AccuWeather Inc., told Bloomberg that Florida could lose 6-10 per cent of its crop during the freeze, with output expected to fall to its lowest point for three years.
Prior to Florida's big January freeze, the United States Department of Agriculture had pegged this year's citrus crop at 135m boxes, down 17 per cent on the previous campaign.
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