Features

• Varieties of lime trees produce fruit from small Mexican limes less than 2 inches long to large Tahitian limes up to 3 inches long. Trees produce fruit usually in their third or fourth year. These evergreen trees grow all year, but most limes mature in summer. Too sour for off-the-tree eating, limes are used much like lemons for flavoring foods and drinks. Their skin and fruit appearance is important because lime wedges frequently garnish food platters and beverage glasses. If the limes develop blossom end rot, a brown and soft area develops at the blossom end of the fruit. As it rots from the end, the fruit spoils and loses both consumer appeal and market value. The limes are discarded due to the rot.
  
  

Blossom-end Rot

• Stylar-end breakdown, commonly called blossom-end rot, is a serious problem to commercial growers and frustrating to home growers. Because the problem occurs at harvest time, a year’s work is lost when the limes quickly decay. The symptoms usually appear after harvest, within a few hours of picking or shortly after the limes are packed and shipped to market. The limes appear fine at picking, but soon develop a water-soaked area on the blossom or stylar end. This soft brown patch spreads, sometimes covering half the lime. Sometimes it occurs on mature limes still on the tree.
  
  

Prevention

• Blossom-end rot occurs when the juice vesicles, small juice-filled membrane sacs, expand and rupture. It occurs most often in large limes such as Tahitian limes. When the large, fluid-filled ripe limes are picked and collected in orchards, they often sit in the sun for several hours and the fluids expand, rupturing the fragile vesicles within the rind. If the limes are handled roughly during picking or dropped, bruises may develop and the ruptured juice sacs cause blossom-end rot. Gentle handling lessens harvest damage. Right after harvest, pre-cooling the limes for 24 hours at 50 to 55 degrees Fahrenheit minimizes blossom-end rot.
  
  

Tips

• In the home orchard, harvest limes while they are green and before they turn yellow. Internal pressures are lower at this stage. Pick them carefully and do not squeeze the limes as this may rupture the internal cells. Do not harvest limes when they are wet from rain or watering as they are swollen with moisture and more likely to be injured. Take them promptly to a cool area, such as a refrigerator, and store them in the humidity drawer at 50 to 55 degrees. Under optimum conditions, you can store limes six to eight weeks.