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The grapefruit tree is a subtropical citrus tree with enormous, tart to semisweet, somewhat bitter fruit. The segmented internal flesh ranges in hue from pale yellow to dark pink.

Grapefruit is a citrus hybrid that originated in Barbados as an unintentional cross between the sweet orange (Citrus sinensis) and the pomelo (Citrus maxima), both of which were imported from Asia in the 17th century. When it was discovered, it was dubbed the forbidden fruit. It was once known as the pomelo, but that name has since been replaced by Citrus maxima.

Grapefruit output (including pomelos) was 9.3 million tonnes in 2019, with China accounting for 53%. Vietnam, the United States, and Mexico are other big producers.

Grapefruit is a natural hybrid fruit. The grapefruit has two ancestors: the Jamaican sweet orange (Citrus sinensis), which is an old Asian hybrid, and the Indonesian pomelo (C. maxima). By 1692, both C. sinensis and C. maxima had established themselves throughout the West Indies. According to one legend, a man named “Captain Shaddock” transported pomelo seeds to Jamaica and developed the first fruit, which he named “shaddocks.” This was most likely a reference to a captain who traded in the West Indies in the seventeenth century. After that, the grapefruit most likely developed as a naturally occurring hybrid between the two plants some time after they were introduced.

A hybrid fruit known as forbidden fruit was originally reported in 1750 by a Welshman, Rev. Griffith Hughes, who described specimens from Barbados in The Natural History of Barbados (along with 14 other citrus fruits including the guiney orange). Hughes’ forbidden fruit, on the other hand, might have been a plant unrelated to grapefruit but closely connected to it.

Naturalist John Lunan used the word grapefruit to designate a closely related Jamaican citrus shrub in 1814. According to Lunan, the term came from the grape’s resemblance in flavor (Vitis vinifera). Tussac (1824) proposes an alternate explanation: the name may refer to the fruit clusters on the tree, which resemble grape bunches. Following this, writers of the time used the phrases forbidden fruit and grapefruit interchangeably.

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