http://www.visaliatimesdelta.com/article/20120309/NEWS01/203090305/
Citrus disease battle plan unveiled
1:04 AM, Mar. 9, 2012
Written by
DAVID CASTELLON
Robert Leavitt, acting director of the California Department of Food and Agriculture, speaks at the
California Citrus MutualS 2012 Citrus Showcase on Thursday at the Visalia Convention Center.
David Castellon
With concerns notched up after recent confirmation that the insect that can carry citrus greening disease has been found in Tulare County, members of the citrus industry gathered Thursday in Visalia learned California's plan if that disease manifests in the state.
That would include the mandatory removal and destruction of infected citrus trees, whether in commercial groves or in people's yards, Robert Leavitt, acting director of the California Department of Food and Agriculture's Plant, Health and Pest Prevention Services Division, told a crowd of about 600 growers, packinghouse operators and others in the industry.
Compliance would be mandatory and areas 400-800 meters around the infected trees would be treated by CDFA-run teams with insecticides to kill any nearby infected bugs, he said.
"Mandatory means [state officials] have full authority and they can use that authority," said Shirley Kirkpatrick, who co-owns a citrus and pomegranate farm near Lindcove, said of the mandate by CDFA Secretary Karen Ross. "That's very good for growers."
She was among the people at the Visalia Convention Center for the 2012 Citrus Showcase put on by California Citrus Mutual, the annual meeting for the Exeter-based citrus-growers' cooperative.
The highlights of the event were Leavitt's speech which included announcing Ross' mandate -and a seminar in which Leavitt and other experts detailed efforts in the state to fight the spread of the Asian citrus psyllid, which until recently had been found in Southern California and not the Central Valley.
In December, the back half of a psyllid was found in a sticky trap for a glassy-wing sharpshooter in a navel orange grove southeast of Lindsay. A state lab confirmed Feb. 7 that the insect was an Asian citrus psyllid and that it wasn't infected with HLB.
"It was a surprise," said Brian Taylor, field operations director for the Visalia-based Citrus Research Board.
Extensive surveys and insect trappings near the site turned up no others, and Leavitt said he and other experts believe the bug may have "hitched a ride" on a vehicle or an item shipped here rather than being a sign that insects have migrated here.
While the nearly 10-acre grove where the psyllid was found was sprayed with insecticides, farmers in the area haven't gone out and sprayed their orchards en masse.
The fear is that psyllids could make it here carrying huanglongbing also known as "HLB" and "citrus greening disease" which Leavitt and others here described as the most dangerous disease in the world to citrus trees.
"If the Asian citrus psyllid gets established here, it's basically industry ending," said Dave Sorenson, who owns a small orange grove north of Visalia.
The disease has been a major worry among growers of all sorts of citrus since Asian citrus psyllids were first found in San Diego in 2008.
Hundreds of thousands of the gnat-sized insects have been found in traps put out by the CDFA and researchers across Southern California and Ventura County, and the state has imposed strict quarantines on moving citrus fruit and nursery plants to keep the insects from spreading.
Citrus psyllids feed on the leaves and branches of citrus trees, not the fruit. They can contract HLB when they bite into infected trees and, if they carry the bacterial disease, the insects can spread it to each tree they feed upon.
There is no cure for a tree infected with HLB, which is why growers are so concerned about it.
Places where HLB has been found have had devastating results on citrus groves, California Citrus Mutual President Joel Nelsen said.
He said that since HLB was first discovered in Brazil in 2004, farmers have pulled out and destroyed about 12 million infected trees.
In comparison, California's commercial groves have about 35 million trees, with Tulare County being the top producer in the state's $2 billion citrus industry.
Another $1.2 billion is generated by industries tied to citrus, Nelsen said.
Since 2005, about 200,000 acres of HLB-infected trees in Florida have been uprooted about half the state's citrus trees while another 40,000 acres have been abandoned, costing the citrus industry there an estimated $6.7 million, Nelsen said.
California has about 285,000 acres of commercial citrus groves, with nearly 119,000 bearing and non-bearing acreage in Tulare County, he said.
Nelson said that so far, developing resistant trees hasn't been successful, and even if it were, growing enough saplings to replace trees now in groves and maturing enough to produce fruit would take years.
He said UC Riverside researchers have begun releasing wasps from Pakistan, a natural predator of the psyllids, in the Los Angeles basin to see if they can limit psyllid populations.
If HLB is found in any California citrus tree, the plan calls for pulling the tree out of the ground at the roots and then burning it in orchards or, in residential areas, chipping and hauling it away, Leavitt said.
"This is one of the most profound announcements the secretary could have made in regard to the industry," Nelsen told the audience after Leavitt's announcement.
He said that people in residential areas may object to the spraying but in neighborhoods and commercial areas of Southern California where psyllids have been found, residents have rarely objected to having their yards sprayed with insecticides.
Many of the growers at the Citrus Showcase said they like the CDFA's plan.
"We want an aggressive program," said Kirkpatrick said.
Martin Britz, who grows citrus in Fresno County and Tulare County, near Traver, said he supports the rules that would take effect if HLB is found here, "because our livelihoods are at stake."
Kirkpatrick noted that the threat is dire enough that citrus growers largely didn't object a few years ago when the industry put a tariff on citrus commercially grown in California currently 7 cents a crate to help detect and eradicate Asian citrus psyllids.
