One of the major developments in Israeli citrus growing in recent years has been the increase in production of Sunrise grapefruit. This process entailed massive capita! investment from private as well as public resources during a time period of about 20 years. Fxport quantities of Sunrise are still increasing while prices declined substantially since the mid-80's. We are evaluating the investment decisions by comparing the investment in planting Sunrise to keeping an existing grove of white grapefruit. Our main findings are- (1) About one third of Sunrise plantations planted in the first part of the two decade period gained a positive and high Net Present Value, while the other two thirds planted later may end up with a very low or even negative NPV; (2) A variation of the product life cycle concept is identified in the development of Sunrise export sales. In the basic PLC concept sales volume and profits develop more or less parallel over lime, while in Sunrise exports the time series of sales is delayed in comparison to profits; (3) These findings are explained by the perennial nature of citrus production with its long time lag from investment til! the start of production.