Citrus growers are trying to popularise mandarins with green tinges, but say shoppers have come to expect the perfect glossy orange colour created by gas treatments.
The popular imperial mandarin variety is meant to have touches of green on the skin, but growers use ethylene gas to speed up the ripening process, removing all green colouring.
The degreening practice is intended to make the fruit more desirable to consumers.
Gayndah citrus grower and member of Citrus Australia, Dennis Smith, said he used ethylene gas on his mandarins but it didn't improve the taste.
"We've just been told that mandarins are orange, and some are, when they're ready they're full colour and that's fine, but some aren't," Mr Smith said.
"They eat wonderfully straight off the tree."
He said mandarin trees produced ethylene gas naturally, which slowly ripened the fruit over six to eight weeks.
He said the use of a degreening room condensed the ripening time to a few days by feeding the fruit a low but consistent amount of ethylene gas.
Mr Smith said mandarins lost their acid content and contained too much sugar to sustain the gassing when the season hit the four-week mark.
He said that increased the likelihood of bacterial soft rot and decreased shelf life, putting consumers off buying the fruit.
Spreading the word
Mr Smith said the industry regularly had discussions about educating consumers about the colouring of imperial mandarins, but retailers needed to get on board.
"It's more about getting the information out there," he said.
He said retailers needed to put some posters up in store, do some tasting and let consumers know that "yeah, there is a bit of green on it, but it's wonderful".
"If it doesn't look that appealing, it's probably not going to sell as well until you get the message out there that it's how it's supposed to look."
Degreening a common practice
Mr Smith said retailers required mandarins to be a bright orange colour in order to be purchased.
"Within the industry, it's certainly discussed because it's an ongoing issue and we are getting a lot of pushback from Coles and Woolworths on this variety because they do have a tendency to break down once we start putting gas on them," Mr Smith said.
"The retailers tell us that we have to make them bright orange, they have to look a certain way.
"I can certainly understand it from the retailer's point of view, they want to buy a product, and they want to be able to resell it, make money, we all want to do that [but] if the quality is not there to sustain that, then there's going to be an issue."
A spokesperson for Coles said degreening was commonly used across the fresh produce industry globally.
Woolworths provided background information regarding degreening policies and said it did not require growers to use ethylene gas on their mandarins and it was an industry practice used at the discretion of farmers.
