Moroccan citron

The precise location of cultivation is at the village Assads in the Taroudant Province, and a 100 km east of Agadir, as was numerously reported by rabbinical and secular sources.

Grafted citrons are not kosher for ritual use on the biblical Jewish holiday Sukkot, according to Jewish religious laws, (halakha),[5] and some prefer to search for etrog citrons none of whose ancestors had been grafted.[6]

In 1995, professor Eliezer E. Goldschmidt together with a delegation of rabbis were hired by rabbi Yosef Shalom Eliashiv of Jerusalem, Israel, to check out if Morocco is still in the same state of kashrut, and if any grafted etrog is to be found over there. Goldschmidt asked the Moroccan professor of horticulture, namely Mohamed El-Otmani from Agadir, to assist.

Berber peasants climbing up the steep mountain at the way to their orchards.

All together they climbed up the Anti-Atlas canyon where the local Berbers have been cultivating the Moroccan citron for many centuries, and they were very impressed from the old tradition which is practiced there, finding not one grafted citron tree.

The delegation presented their finding to Eliashiv, who was very happy about the information that the Moroccan wilderness still presents the unbroken lineage, of a non-grafted etrog.

However, in 1960, Schraga Schlomai, a renowned etrog grower[7] recounted the misfortunes of all the used etrog types besides the one he was growing, which he claimed to be a descendant of the Balady citron from Umm al-Fahm.

As to the Diamante citron (Yanova) and the Greek citron (Corfu), he argued based on the booklet from the Salant partners, that since some of them are proven to be grafted, no certification may be granted to the rest, since it is impossible to determine if the non-grafted citrons are not descendants of the grafted ones.

A halved seedless Moroccan citron (Etrog)

As to the Moroccan and Yemenite citrons he argued, that although there were no grafted trees ever discovered among those kinds, they should be unfit, in light of the differentiation from the Ashkenazi types. The Moroccan citron is allegedly noted for its seedlessness, and the Yemenite for its pulplessness, both are too much different in morphology from the traditional Yanova and Israeli esrogs.[8]

A Moroccan citron with vertically pointing seeds

In 1980, when the market in New York City changed very much in favor of the Moroccan citron, Rabbi Yekusiel Yehudah Halberstam, the Klausenberger Rebbe, reconsolidated the claims of Schraga Schlomai and carried out a banning of the Moroccan for religious use.[9] His ruling was based on the fact that some of them have no seeds, and seeing that the Shiyurei Kneseth haGedola (Orach Chaim 648) discuses what direction the seeds should be facing to prove their purity, he concluded that an authentic citron should always be seedy.

The seeds of the Moroccan citron when present, are actually facing utmost vertically as required, and the partial seedlessness cannot be a result of graft, as the trees were already checked various times, as being completely free of any grafting.

As to natural hybridization that may have occurred to certain types of citron, and should result in genetic and morphological changes, it is very unlikely in light of the DNA comparison conducted by Elizabetta Nicolosi from University of Catania, Italy and a group of researchers from around the globe, where it was found to be completely pure citron and extremely similar to the rest of kosher etrogs.[10]