Among the oldest and best known citrus fruits. Cultivation in Sicily and Calabria is particularly widespread, it finds space both in fresh consumption and in derived products.

Now an established autonomous species, the Blond Orange is an ancient hybrid, whose cultivation began around the middle of the third millennium BC.

Arrived in Europe thanks to the Portuguese sailors in the fourteenth century, this citrus fruit, originally from China and India, grows in the Mediterranean thanks to the mild climate and in general favorable conditions.

Although the first known crops are reported around 1450 in Liguria, over time they are concentrated particularly in Calabria and especially in Sicily, where thanks above all to the explosion of citrus growing at the end of the nineteenth century. The radical transformation of the Sicilian landscape, together with the birth of the first processing industries for obtaining citrus derivatives, means that in a very short time Sicily conquers the primacy in the production and trade throughout the Mediterranean of blond orange and citrus fruits in general.