Citrus fruits, like oranges, have been cultivated for the last 4,000 years in southern China and Southeast Asia. One variety, the citron, was carried to the Middle East some-time between 400 and 600 B.C. Arab traders transported oranges to eastern Africa and the Middle East sometime between 100 and 700 A.D., and during the Arab occupation of Spain, citrus fruits first arrived in southern Europe. From there, they were carried to the New World by explorers where they spread to Florida and Brazil by the sixteenth century.