Rejected because out of focus, but doesn't seem out of focus to me

[danielw20581008]

I just had the attached image rejected because "it's not completely sharp and in-focus when viewed at 100%."  This is an image of breadfruit (a tropical tree fruit).  The front fruit is in focus, which I had intended, with the two other fruits slightly out of focus (intentionally) because of the depth of field (shot at 2.8).  I really like this shot, partially because of the focusing, so I'm not sure why it was rejected.  Thoughts?  Suggestions?

Thanks.

[RBChauDavis]

The areas where it is not focused seems a bit large.  This is just a guess but I think they lean to quantitative evaluations.  For me personally on the qualitative side I think the focus/no focus in this image is visually confusing and I keep thinking an out of focus fruit might just be badly focused.  The leaves are fine.

[danielw20581008]

Thanks.  Very helpful. 

[shashinjin]

so why would someone want to buy an image of breadfruit which is half in and half out of focus? The only reason I can think of is that they'd want to use the out of focus part as negative space for, say, text. However, this image doesn't give them enough visual contrast to overlay anything on. In other words, the fact that you have some breadfruit out of focus doesn't do anything to make this a commercially viable image of breadfruit.