Seedless wonder: Wonderful Citrus continues to expand lemon program

VISALIA, Calif. — Wonderful Citrus, which recently marked its fifth season with Wonderful Seedless Lemons, is laser-focused on providing its retail partners and consumers with a consistent — and ultimately year-round — supply of its high-quality fruit.

Surrounded by citrus during an October 2023 media tour of a 155-acre Wonderful Citrus grove, Todd Consolascio, director, northern farming, shared how the company’s Northern California citrus operations are working to bump up yields with sustainability top of mind. 

For starters, Wonderful Citrus is using Australian rootstock that has proven prolific down under.

“While these trees are on a rootstock that we’ve never used before, they’re common in Australia, and are supposed to produce fantastic yields,” said Consolascio, who added that tree spacing is also strategic to maximize light penetration. 

“Lemons love to produce fruit inside the tree and that’s where you get high- quality, nice, clean elongated fruit,” Consolascio explained. “Of all citrus varieties, lemons are probably one of the most vigorous trees that we grow.”

As the vigor translates to plants that soak up water, Wonderful Citrus has an internal irrigation team, solely focused on monitoring moisture levels and scheduling irrigation according to the season and desired outcome, which is optimal for fruit production.

During peak season, “micro sprinklers disperse about 6 gallons per hour, so we know exactly how much water we’re using,” he said.

In the winter months, Wonderful Citrus has the ability to run water to warm the orchard and avoid frost. It also employs automated wind machines that are efficiently and effectively controlled by a phone app.

Technology is also helping Wonderful Citrus reach and exceed its sustainability goals.

“What’s beneficial is once the sun comes up to a certain level, we can turn everything off at once. You can just go to the app on your phone, highlight all your wind machines, and boom, everything shuts down. That can save you 40 minutes-worth of fuel right there. So, it’s been really helpful,” Consolascio said.

Courting lemon lovers

Wonderful Citrus, which owns the exclusive rights to sell and market the seedless lemon variety in North America, isn’t only growing in California. 

To achieve consistent supply, the Los Angeles-based company is also engaging in what Zak Lafitte, president of Wonderful Citrus, describes as “massive redevelopment projects” to cultivate 3,000 acres or 600,000 seedless lemon trees in Mexico. 

“The advantage to growing seedless lemons in central Mexico is to produce fruit in the summertime, so it’s counter-seasonal to California, giving us a full year’s supply of seedless lemons,” Lafitte said. “Every year we see more volume on these non-GMO lemons.” 

Who’s the customer for Wonderful Seedless Lemons?

“Our goal is that if you are a high user of lemons — the top 10% of consumers — that you convert to seedless and you never go back to buying lemons with seeds again,” Lafitte said.

To appeal to this consumer, Wonderful Citrus has created “experiential” marketing campaigns, Lafitte said. This might include photos of a salad or iced tea to instantly convey the benefit of a seedless fruit. The company also has POS and display cases that play equally well in the produce and seafood departments. 

“Our job is to deliver quality,” he said. “Eventually, we’ll grow seedless lemons 52 weeks a year, and we’ll erase the country-of-origin argument because of the trust we’ve built.”