C.D. Atkins; Helped Perfect Frozen Orange Juice

C.D. Atkins, 86, a Florida researcher who helped perfect the process for producing frozen orange juice concentrate. Atkins was part of a team assembled by the Florida Citrus Commission in 1942 to develop an orange juice product for the U.S. military that could be transported to American troops overseas. The team, which was led by the late Louis Gardner MacDowell and included scientist Edwin Moore, did not invent orange juice concentrate, but it found a way to produce concentrate that retained its flavor. MacDowell proposed making an over-concentrate and then adding fresh juice and other flavoring elements to it. “It was my idea to do this,” MacDowell told writer John McPhee in McPhee’s 1966 book, “Oranges,” “but my colleagues Dr. E.L. Moore and Mr. C.D. Atkins did the doing.” All three men were inducted into the Citrus Hall of Fame and the Florida Agriculture Hall of Fame for perfecting a process that later was a boon to the citrus industry and led to the popular consumer item. None of them got rich on the process they perfected, which was patented by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. It was made available to any company that wanted to use it, the most successful being Vacuum Foods, which later evolved into Minute Maid. Atkins was a former high school chemistry teacher when he joined the research project. He worked for the Florida Department of Citrus for 33 years and was a grower in a family citrus business. On June 3 in Winter Haven, Fla.