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Produce Oasis Tip of the Day

Each day Produce Oasis has a new Tip of the Day featuring your favorite fruits, vegetables and herbs

7/4/2009 - Grapefruit Trivia

The principal ancestor of the grapefruit - a subtropical evergreen - was called pomelo, brought by a captain Shaddock to Barbados from the Malay Archipelago. In the mid-1700's, it was called, "Forbidden Fruit." The pomelo fruit, borne in clusters that gave rise to the name grapefruit, was also called shaddock, and is quite different from the grapefruit we know today.

The West Indies were the point of origin for grapefruit, probably as a cross between the pomelo and an orange. It came to Florida in 1840 where a seedless fruit was found fifty years later and propagated to give us the Marsh Seedless variety.

Grapefruit keeps at room temperature for at least a week. For longer storage, refrigerate in a plastic bag or in the covered vegetable crisper.

OASIS has much more information on citrus.

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