Dr. Manners, as always, you have given a knowledgeable response of what could be the possible basis for DPI's residential 39 Citrus tree rule. However, I fail to see any connection between the number of citrus trees, or anything else for that matter, that a person can grow on their property, and diseases caused by illegal smugglers. They are two separate issues. If DPI only allowed as few as 5 trees to be planted on residential property, I don't see how that would lessen the incidence of diseases by the smuggling of contraband. However, thank you for your response. Lastly, Dr. Manners still would like a Florida Southern College online class/degree in citrus and tropical fruits. If I lived in Florida, I would be your best student. - Millet

I appreciate the availabiltiy of budwood from FL DPI and I think that many who have brought in diseased plant material are unaware of the variety of material that is available at a very low cost. I actually found out about it by doing a web search after reading about the program in CA on this forum. So forums like this by publishing links to state budwood sources may help a lot in the long run.

Education is the key to solving most of the problems.

I was even more prone to use budwood from FL DPI than from my own few trees since I had had a disease problem (sooty canker) with several of my trees. With the ability to get certified disease free budwood, why risk spreading disease in your yard.

FL state citrus researchers are also doing a great job of trying to identify and establish biological pest controls and disease resistant varieties.

I can live with the 39 tree limit-- it will just slow down the rate that I grow and graft trees for my 11 brothers and sisters.

-- Skeet

Global warming will not turn the earth to a Mars or Moon...

The green earth will be here much longer than man, unless we blow up the planet itself.

The precious Temperature ranges that we are concerned about, are for the survival of man, not for the survival of the planet.

The earth will bounce back, but Man will be gone

Millet, I did not mean to imply that the 39 tree rule and the smuggling of illegal plant material were directly related; rather, it was a response to the concept, held by many non-commercial citrus people, that the state should regulate commercial growers, but should just ignore hobbyist growers, and leave them to do whatever they please. And I was pointing out that most of our horrendous problems could likely be traced to a hobbyist grower, not to a commercial source. Now certainly, the 39 tree rule specifically will not help in any effort to stop that situation. The culprits were likely zero tree hobbyists, who now have the one sick tree from grandma's yard in Timbuktu. So if anything, it is my belief that the state underregulates the non-commercial growing of citrus, *IF* one believes that the state has any obligation to protect its commercial industry.

I do not believe that climate change has anything to do with any of our current problems; it is jet air travel, specifically and uniquely, which has made it possible to introduce a pest or disease from the other side of the world in a matter of hours. And unfortunately the sniffer beagles at entry ports are not always trained to smell psyllids or canker bacteria; they're interested in drugs.

The various strong hurricanes during the past year CAUSED the biggest spread of citrus canker ever and other diseases in Florida that it made the federal state government to give up on the program and has lifted restrictions on owning citrus trees in Florida. The increase in the frequency and intensities of hurricanes WERE the direct results of global climate change caused by man's giant atmospheric experimentation. More than 95% of the wold's scientists that the increased intensities are due to global temperature rise, and almost 99% agree that these are caused by global climate change.

I will try to locate an article in the scientific American that they can spot dusts from China and Africa blowing across the oceans and offloading them in the US. The yellow dusts were first pictured from the space shuttle. We don't need planes to carry some disease spores across vast oceans.

Fine Joe. I'll not argue -- not worth raising the blood pressure over. Bye.
Malcolm

I do apologize Prof. Manners. It was not meant to be personal, just hope to present the evidences we have gathered for lively discussion.

When I bring to light those articles that I recall and have read elsewere, I present it here. It doesn't mean that I believe those data myself, they still needed to be verified one way or another but have kept them in mind and discussions like these, they spring forth and are presented but in no way those are personal to be angry over. We owe you a lot in terms of your contributions, and other help of procuring citrus fertilizers, and sharing your experiences.

I just wished those scientifically peer reviewed articles were not conclusive, but so many independent studies and variables cross checked together at the global level, from simple physics such as effect of temperature rise on the carrying capacity of air to increased instensities of precipitations and extreme atmospheric fluctuations, and being a system modeler myself (from PhD AgroEcology courses), I can't stop myself from connecting them all together.

Joe, I think you are right to a certain extent-- the spread of disease is ultimately inevitable. Especially viruses since some essentially "live" forever, and we clearly cannot stop Mother Nature from spreading things around. However, clearly there are things we can do to minimize their spread of disease by man. Some of those things are the simple steps we take ourselves to sterilize our grafting tools or make sure that our buds come from disease free source.

We do these things because we know the consequences of not doing them-- we have been educated. The problem comes from people who are uneducated--who do not know about the consequences or the ways to avoid the consequences and still attain the objective.

That is where government can help --by providing disease free budwood and limiting import or transport of potentitially infected material. One of the ways they do that is through their nursery inspections and regulations. The 39 tree limit is just a line drawn to try and separate commercial nurseries from hobbist like myself and I can accept that.

I do believe that this forum and open discussions can do much more than the government as far as educating people about the problems and even changes in the law-- as we have been seeing in the threads on transport of seeds.

-- Skeet