Harvesting
At Paramount Citrus, an experienced field evaluation team continually measures our products’ internal and external characteristics such as size, color, sugar levels, sugar to acid ratios and the external quality of the fruit throughout the year. Using handheld technology, the team provides near real-time intelligence that enables us to harvest our fruit at the optimal point of maturity, which matches the fruit to our customers needs and guarantees a better product for our customers.
We combine this information with our assessment of customer demand to schedule all harvest activities. This allows us to get the best fruit to you when you need it – off the tree and fresh. With our diverse portfolio of land throughout California and our dynamic harvesting labor force, we often find areas to pick fruit when others cannot due to poor weather or other adverse conditions. Once the harvest schedule is determined, our citrus products are hand-picked and placed in containers for transport to one of our packing facilities.
Paramount’s innovative harvesting practices allow for consistent quality control.
- Paramount controls over 95% of all throughput
- Fruit Management System (FMS) grants us the ability to continuously evaluate all acres simultaneously.
- Utilization of hand-held wireless devices to update crop conditions
- Strict harvesting practices ensure the safety of our fruit pickers and proper care of the fruit.
- GMP based harvesting practices to protect our products from food safety risks
- Traceability begins with harvest, every lot is tracked back to the block from which it was harvested