The United States Department of Agriculture's (USDA) National Agricultural Statistics Service has released its Citrus Fruits Summary for the year, revealing that total US production for 2009/10 came to 10.9m tonnes, down 8 per cent year-on-year.
Florida accounted for 65 per cent of the total crop, the report said, followed by California with 31 per cent, while Texas and Arizona produced the remaining 4 per cent.
Florida's 134m orange boxes represented a drop of 18 per cent, with grapefruit (20.3m boxes down 20.3 per cent. California's all-orange production grew 22 per cent to 56.5m boxes with grapefruit production falling 13 per cent and tangerine/mandarins up to a record 9.9m boxes.
Citrus production in Texas climbed 4 per cent on 2008/09, with orange yields up 12 per cent and grapefruit production up 2 per cent, while Arizona's overall citrus crop dropped 27 per cent on the previous year.
While total volumes fell, the value of the 2009/10 crop increased 5 per cent year-on-year to US$2.88bn (€2.1bn), with high prices for the majority of citrus crops pushing up value.
The orange category was the only to experience an overall drop in value, down 2 per cent on 2008/09, with grapefruit value climbing 28 per cent.
Tangerine and mandarin values were up 33 per cent on the previous campaign, the USDA reported, with tangelo value increasing 23 per cent and lemon value rising 14 per cent.
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