The flesh might be soft or its colour is too pale.
A citrus farm in southern New South Wales, wants its customers to get exactly what they pay for when they buy a blood orange.
It is trialling new technology which scans each piece of fruit on a conveyor belt with a high-powered light to reveal its internal colour and sugar level.
Normally fruit is graded on what it looks like on the outside or how much it weighs.
Len Mancini, co-director of Red Belly Citrus in Griffith, said this grading equipment could help to eliminate some of that guesswork.
“What we’re looking for is anthocyanin, that’s the pigment that makes a blood orange red,” he said
“That particular molecule is picked up by the scanner and it can be graphed.
“So that there can be a particular signature for an orange with lots of anthocyanin and there will be a signature for an orange without much anthocyanin in it.”
He said grading fruit on its internal characteristics could push their product into a new premium category in the market.
“We’re hoping that this will allow us to actually produce a whole new range or brand of blood oranges for us that will be super black, super dark and guaranteed to be,” he said.
“It’ll just change the way in which we can market blood oranges in this country and probably overseas as well.”