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Your orange juice may taste wildly different as prices for the fruit skyrocket
A global orange shortage has sent prices skyrocketing - and it means your morning orange juice could taste different later this year.
Orange juice manufacturers are looking at blending in the juice of other fruits - such as pear, apple and grape - to cut costs.
It emerged this week that the harvest is expected to be down 24 percent on last year, and is on course to be the worst since the late 1980s.
News of that pushed up the price of orange juice concentrate that food companies buy to make drinks. It hit record high of $4.95 a pound - twice what it was a year ago.
Tropicana is the US's biggest juice company. A 52 fluid ounce bottle is $4.29 at Target., up around 30 cents on earlier in the year.
Harry Campbell, a commodity market data analyst at research group Mintec, said that soaring orange juice prices have forced manufacturers to consider alternative fruit.
Orange juice is set to cost more this year due to the shortage of oranges - which could also mean mandarins are used as an alternative
Harry Campbell said that soaring orange juice prices have forced OJ manufacturers to consider alternative fruit juices
'A lot of them will be changing the quantities of juice they are putting in their blends to drop the orange juice and increase other juices, such as pear juice, apple juice, grape juice, so they are less reliant on the orange juice,' Campbell told CNBC via telephone.
The spike in prices is largely due to declining output in Florida, the primary US producer, and disease and extreme weather events in Brazil, which accounts for about 70 percent of global production.
Brazilian orange trees have also been hit hard by citrus greening, a disease that causes fruits to be partially green, small, misshapen, and bitter. Brazil is on track for its worst orange harvest sice 1988-89
'There are three main factors driving the soaring price of orange juice: drought, disease, and demand,' Ted Jenkin, CEO and co-founder of oXYGen Financial, told FOX Business.
In addition, Florida has been devastated by hurricanes and the greening disease,.
'This is a crisis,' Kees Cools, president of the International Fruit and Vegetable Juice Association (IFU), told the Financial Times.
'We've never seen anything like it, even during the big freezes and big hurricanes.'
Brazilian orange trees have also been hit hard by citrus greening, a disease that causes fruits to be partially green, small, misshapen, and bitter. This is a farm in Sao Paulo
In the past, orange juice makers have managed to avoid long-term shortages by freezing juice stock, which can be preserved for up to two years.
Frozen orange juice - which s good for two years - has been used in the past when there are shortages.
But this frozen stock is running low after three years of falling supply forced much of it to be used already.
Cools also said juice makers may have to switch to other fruits.
Mandarin would be an option since its trees are less susceptible to the greening disease. But switching could take time.