Treasure Coast Citrus Guides

Indian River citrus is fruit grown inside the Indian River production area that Florida Statutes section 601.091 maps out, an area running from the Flagler and Volusia county line south to the West Palm Beach Canal.

The statute says only fruit grown within the boundaries of a named production area, or juice and other products made solely from that fruit, may be identified or labeled with the area's name, unless a final court order in a case begun before July 1, 1976 says otherwise (Florida Statutes 601.091). Its survey description passes Lake Harney, Lake Poinsett, Lake Winder, Lake Washington, Sawgrass Lake and Lake Helen Blazes, reaches the south line of Brevard County, then the southwest corner of St. Lucie County and the south line of Martin County, and closes along the West Palm Beach Canal, which the law also calls the Okeechobee Canal. The line is drawn by township, range and county lines.

A separate statute groups counties into citrus districts for state citrus administration. Citrus District Six covers Alachua, Brevard, Broward, Flagler, Indian River, Lake, Marion, Martin, Miami-Dade, Monroe, Orange, Palm Beach, Putnam, St. Johns, Seminole, St. Lucie and Volusia counties (Florida Statutes 601.09). That district list comes from a different section of the Citrus Code than the production area and also names Lake and Orange counties.

The UF/IFAS season table is statewide rather than specific to the Treasure Coast, and it runs from the early navels and Hamlins in October to the Valencias that last into June.

Source for every row: UF/IFAS Citrus Culture in the Home Landscape (HS132), Table 1. The same publication says that picking one tree from each of the early, midseason and late groups will supply fresh fruit continuously from early November to July. In the table, the white and red flesh grapefruit varieties are listed from November or December into May.

St. Lucie County produced 1,395 thousand boxes of citrus and Indian River County 659 thousand boxes in the 2025-2026 season, according to USDA.

Source for every row: USDA NASS Citrus Summary, August 27, 2026, whose county table excludes lemons. NASS names St. Lucie among the top five citrus counties, at 1.40 million boxes, behind Polk at 3.27 million, Highlands at 3.07 million and DeSoto at 1.66 million and ahead of Hardee at 1.31 million; the five together account for 73 percent of state production. In St. Lucie, all grapefruit came to 739 thousand boxes and all oranges to 629 thousand; in Indian River the figures were 369 thousand and 90 thousand. The county table reports tangerines and tangelos as one column with no split by variety, and Indian River County's figure in that column is 200 thousand boxes.

Every year from 2023 to 2026, USDA counted fewer citrus acres in both St. Lucie and Indian River counties, part of a statewide drop that reached 21 percent in the latest survey.

Source for both rows: USDA NASS Commercial Citrus Inventory, 2026 preliminary. The inventory puts total Florida citrus at 165,359 acres, down 21 percent from the last annual survey, and says all 23 published counties showed decreases. The same table lists 1,904.4 thousand trees in St. Lucie County and 999.2 thousand in Indian River County for 2026.

Yes, under the same rules as other Florida citrus: Treasure Coast fruit from a canker quarantined area moves to other states with a certificate only after packing in a commercial packinghouse that has an APHIS compliance agreement.

The federal text, which names no Treasure Coast county, is 7 CFR 301.75-7: regulated fruit produced in or moved into a quarantined area may move interstate with a certificate only if it was packed in such a packinghouse, treated under part 305, and cleared of leaves, twigs and other plant parts except stems shorter than 1 inch attached to the fruit; anyone who repackages the fruit before it leaves needs a compliance agreement too (7 CFR 301.75-7). The rule text does not fix which areas are quarantined: the APHIS Administrator lists each quarantined State or portion of a State on the PPQ website (7 CFR 301.75-4). When the U.S. Department of Agriculture wrote the packinghouse approach in 2007, it said citrus canker was only known to be present in the United States in Florida, and that the rule would let Florida commercial, gift fruit and dooryard growers move fruit to states other than commercial citrus-producing states if they met its conditions (Federal Register, November 19, 2007). The same notice describes dooryard growers as homeowners with citrus trees in their yards who want to ship the fruit.

Dealing in citrus fruit is licensed in Florida as well, in St. Lucie and Indian River counties as elsewhere in the state. Section 601.55 bars anyone from acting as a citrus fruit dealer without a current license for each shipping season, and a repeat license approved on or before August 1 runs from August 1 through July 31 (Florida Statutes 601.55).

The University of Florida runs the Indian River Research and Education Center, known as IRREC, at 2199 South Rock Road in Fort Pierce, with citrus horticulture and postharvest technology among its programs.

The IRREC home page lists the center's phone as (772) 468-3922 and names research and extension programs in citrus horticulture, postharvest technology, entomology, plant pathology, soil and water science and aquaculture, along with a strategic positioning plan for 2026 to 2036 (UF/IFAS Indian River Research and Education Center). The IRREC home page also links to postharvest data and postharvest news.

The Honeybell guide covers the Minneola tangelo, and the guide list on this hub links every citrus guide in the section.

The Honeybell guide answers what a Honeybell is, why it ripens from December to February, which state ripeness rules apply to tangelos, and how many tangelos Indian River and St. Lucie counties grow. Questions about where the Indian River name may be used, which months each variety ripens, how much fruit each county produces and how shipping out of state works are answered on this hub, with the statute, the UF/IFAS season table, the two USDA reports and the federal canker rule linked beside each figure. Last verified: October 22, 2026, county row by county row against the USDA NASS citrus summary and inventory, with the production area boundary, District Six list and dealer license rule read from the 2025 Florida Statutes and the shipping conditions from 7 CFR 301.75-7 and the 2007 Federal Register notice.