Harvesting/collection
• 1 Oranges are harvested from large groves. Some citrus growers are members of cooperative packing and marketing associations, while others are independent growers. When the mature fruit is ready to pick, a crew of pickers is sent in to pull the fruit off the trees. The collected fruit is sent to packing centers where it is boxed for sale as whole fruit, or sent to plants for juice processing. The oranges are generally shipped via truck to juice extraction facilities, where they are unloaded by a gravity feed onto a conveyor belt that transports the fruit to a storage bin.