Crossword Genius

Losing grand, cultivating dry fruit (6)

Ross

I believe the answer is:

raisin

I'm a little stuck... Click here to teach me more about this clue!

'dry fruit' is the definition.
'raisin' can be an answer for 'fruit' (raisin is a kind of fruit). I am not sure about the 'dry' bit.

'losing grand cultivating' is the wordplay.
'losing' suggests deleting specific letters.
'grand' becomes 'g' (G is short for grand as in a thousand).
'cultivating' becomes 'raising' (raising is a kind of cultivating).
'raising' with 'g' taken out is 'RAISIN'.

Can you help me to learn more?

(Other definitions for raisin that I've seen before include "Fruit for the Christmas cake" , "fruit product" , "Dried 18" , "A dried grape, nice in cake" , "Large dried grape" .)

I've seen this clue in The Times.
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