New Zealand navel oranges have demonstrated the ongoing benefits of maturity standards, with six consecutive seasons of high consumer acceptability.
The retail monitoring data Delytics analyses for Citrus New Zealand has shown a consistently high consumer acceptance for navel oranges since the industry adopted consumer-validated minimum maturity standards in 2016.
Consumer acceptability has averaged 87% for New Zealand navel oranges since the new maturity standards were adopted, despite some significant seasonal variations in weather and crop yield. This is 20 percentage points higher than in 2015, before the standards were adopted, when consumer acceptability was 67%.