a b s t r a c t Fruit microstructure determines mechanical and transport properties of tissues. This calls for geometric characterization and representation of fruit tissue components. In this paper, three important compo-nents of fruit cortex tissue, cell wall, pore network and cells were modeled in 3-D. These components were explicitly defined based on the information gathered from synchrotron X-ray computed tomogra-phy and transmission electron microscopy. The cells were modeled based on a novel ellipsoid tessellation algorithm, producing also 3-D void structures in small fruit cortex sample volumes. The cell wall thick-ness was determined from TEM images using digitization procedures. The resulting geometry models compared well to the tomographic images. The method has the significant advantages of, one, producing models that are easy to use in computer aided design software for multiscale mechanics and mass trans-fer, and two, providing a framework for virtual tissue generation, including cell growth modeling. Fur-thermore, the solid modeling approach avoids many problems of finite element meshing existing today.