Comments on: There’s No Cure for Citrus Greening. California Growers Have No Choice But to Keep Going https://modernfarmer.com/2023/07/theres-no-cure-for-citrus-greening/ Farm. Food. Life. Thu, 17 Aug 2023 19:55:43 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 By: Patrick Byrd https://modernfarmer.com/2023/07/theres-no-cure-for-citrus-greening/#comment-66117 Thu, 17 Aug 2023 19:55:43 +0000 https://modernfarmer.com/?p=149360#comment-66117 What’s the original, evolutionary habitat of citrus, oranges, lemons? We would have to look at where they’re native and have evolved for millions of years, within the forests of Asia, probably China. It’s not an emergent tree in that forest, it’s not even a high canopy tree. You could classify it as a mid-canopy tree. Those forests have many deciduous trees above the citrus that lose their leaves at a certain time of year every season. Could we replicate to some degree the natural environment that citrus has been adapted to over millions of years in our plantations? It has been done. Disease attacks when the immune system is weak. Weak immune systems are caused by stress. With plants much of their immune system is tied up with their fungal associations, the mycorrhizal relationships that really exist in healthy, forest-like soils. How many commercial orange groves have healthy fungal populations? How many commercial groves have trees that aren’t suffering from some heavy stress? There’s the problem, it’s not the disease and it’s not that the plant doesn’t have enough genetic resistance to greening or whatever comes next. It’s that the conditions we offer our crops are so impoverished. Organic growers had their trees wiped out before the conventional ones because they didn’t have recourse to use chemical means to keep the trees alive just a little longer. Both are monocultures though and that’s really the crux of the problem. When will citrus growers look at agroforestry as a solution, after all desperate times call for desperate measures, at least let’s try to do something different, take a chance. You might be the first in your region to do something so radical as to plant other trees together with your oranges, but there are other pioneers who’ve done it before in other places and it works.

]]> By: Alfred Osborn https://modernfarmer.com/2023/07/theres-no-cure-for-citrus-greening/#comment-65483 Mon, 17 Jul 2023 00:13:37 +0000 https://modernfarmer.com/?p=149360#comment-65483 Shocking that this story is so completely wrong and scientifically incorrect in many areas. A simple Google search of Greening cures in Florida, if the author had done so, would have helped fact check a few things.

The most laughable falsehood here is that Florida’s disease spread came from cutting and diseased grafting. Anyone with a fleeting knowledge of the situation knows that’s not close to true. The disease was spread by the psyllid and the State’s lack of commitment to try and stop the psyllid, which unfortunately is an extremely efficient vector for HLB.

There is a cure. It passed regulatory approval in Florida last October and was commercially available in Florida starting in January 2023. Over half of the state’s producing trees have been treated by now. It’s also now available and being used in Texas.

It is true that the Florida industry is in crisis and has collapsed. It is a severe threat to California. The disease has been identified and around on this globe for over 100 years, but it’s arrival to the Americas (first Brazil and later Florida) a few decades ago has been poorly managed by industry and regulatory bodies.

Oh… it should also be noted that organic groves in Florida died first from HLB before the convention groves. I’ve seen stories posted about organic growers in Florida thriving…. The stories are old and outdated… those growers are out of business, just like most of the others.

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