leaving the bottom open to allow gas exchange, remaining under complete darkness during the ripening process. Control fruit were located outside of the tree canopy, next to covered fruit, and exposed to natural photoperiodic conditions. At the beginning of the treatments and from October to December, or to November in Satsuma mandarin, representative samples of covered and noncovered fruit from each variety were harvested in the morning between 9 and 10:30 a.m. and immediately delivered to the laboratory. Flavedo tissue was excised from the whole fruit, frozen in liquid nitrogen, ground to a fine powder and stored at −80 ◦C until analysis. Fruit samples of the four genotypes were harvested in the same growing season.