Brazil launches 2 new early-season orange varieties for premium juice

Brazil’s citrus industry may soon get a boost from two newly released sweet orange varieties designed for early harvesting and higher-quality juice. The Kawatta and Majorca varieties aim to solve key problems faced by current early-season oranges.

Imported from Suriname and Florida and tested in São Paulo since the early 1990s, these varieties stood out for their strong juice colour and flavour — something that popular cultivars like Hamlin often lack. While Hamlin and Valencia Americana are high-yielding, their juice tends to have weaker taste and lower colour intensity.

According to Embrapa researcher Eduardo Girardi, early-ripening oranges offer practical advantages for citrus producers. Because of their shorter production cycle, they are less exposed to drought, easier to manage with pruning or even mechanical harvesting, and deliver solid yields of over 30 tonnes per hectare without irrigation. Both new varieties performed well on São Paulo’s most common rootstocks and in multiple growing regions.

For the orange juice industry, the current range of early varieties presents challenges. Camilla Pacheco from Citrosuco explains that today's options often lack flavour, sugar content, and consistency — all essential for making not-from-concentrate (NFC) orange juice, a product that brings more value than frozen alternatives.

Kawatta and Majorca meet many of those standards, offering a better sensory profile and more balanced acidity. However, they’re still vulnerable to diseases like greening (HLB), which can affect fruit quality if not carefully managed.

These new releases, developed by Embrapa, IAC’s Sylvio Moreira Citriculture Center, and the FCC Foundation, offer growers and juice makers new options for combining early harvest timing with higher-end juice quality. If managed well, they could help Brazil remain competitive in global citrus markets.

source: abrafrutas.org

photo: revistacultivar.com