The answer depends entirely on whether the fruit is fresh or processed, and confusing the two is the most common error in a first specification.
Fresh fruit: statutory marketing standards
Fresh fruit placed on the Union market falls under Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) No 543/2011. That instrument sets a general marketing standard applying broadly, plus specific marketing standards in its annexes for a defined list of species, including apples, peaches and nectarines, and table grapes. Where a specific standard applies, it fixes minimum requirements, quality classes, sizing provisions and tolerances, and it makes the class designation a legal statement rather than a commercial description.
Consult the current consolidated text. The annex list has changed over the years, and a species that was covered by a specific standard at one point may be covered only by the general standard now, or the reverse.
Processed fruit: no statutory grades
Frozen, dried, puree and concentrate lines are not covered by those marketing standards. There is no legal “Class I” frozen raspberry. What governs instead is the contract specification, sitting on top of the horizontal food law: hygiene requirements under Regulation (EC) No 852/2004, contaminant limits consolidated in Regulation (EU) 2023/915, residue limits under Regulation (EC) No 396/2005, and labelling under Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011.
That is why processed fruit specifications are long. Nothing is inherited.
The reference texts the trade actually uses
Where no statutory grade exists, buyers and sellers borrow vocabulary:
- Codex commodity standards for quick frozen fruit, which provide defect definitions and quality factors that a contract can name.
- UNECE DDP standards for dried produce, including DDP-07 for prunes, which supplies the size-count-per-unit-weight and moisture class language the dried fruit trade speaks in.
- Codex CXS 247-2005 for juices and nectars, which carries the reference Brix table.
None of these is Union law. They bind only where the contract names them, and naming them explicitly is exactly what a good specification does. The fruit grading guide works through how to build a grade definition that survives a dispute.