For people living in California, other than from UCR, it's often times difficult or impossible to obtain budwood legally. However, you can legally obtain seeds of citrus varieties, rare or otherwise, and than grow the tree. - Millet

UCR has special days that budwood is distributed. You can go through their budwood list and pick out the budwood you wish to purchase, and they will send it to you on the day of distribution. Here is information on the budwood program - Millet
http://ccpp.ucr.edu/budwood/budwood.php#
http://ccpp.ucr.edu/budwood/cutdates.php

Millet, this June will be the last of the 2 or 3 times a year offerings. There is a new director at the helm of the CCPP, and they are going to try moving to a monthly budwood ordering system. I will let the forum know more about it when I get the next email from CCPP. They are trying to encourage growers to order and propagate more citrus.

Patty, is Dr. Kruger no longer at the CCPP? - Millet

It's John Bash who is retiring, and his responsibilities have been taken over by Dr. Rock Christiano, who will be responsible for trying this new ordering system out. Here was the very nice letter they sent out to all of us on the budwood mailing list:

Quote:

June 2013 CCPP Budwood Cut Dear Friends, We are getting close to the June 2013 CCPP Budwood Cut. The last day to submit your order is 06/12/13. Are you not ready yet? In an attempt to better serve you, the CCPP will offer monthly budwood cuts on an experimental basis starting after our traditional cut this June. The orders submitted during one month will be handled during the first week of the following month. We hope that having monthly access to CCPP budwood will give you more flexibility in your decision-making and propagation planning. Please, be aware that quantity of budwood of some varieties may be limited but as always we will do our best to meet your needs. This experiment that hopefully will result in permanent changes to the budwood distribution scheme is possible because the CCPP has a new member. Dr. Rock Christiano is the Manager of the CCPP Foundation Operations at the Lindcove Research and Extension Center (LREC). He has been working for almost a year now at LREC and he is dedicated to the care of the Foundation Blocks and the budwood distribution. Mr. John Bash after almost three decades of CCPP service will be retiring this summer. Therefore, Rock will be responsible and your new contact person for budwood orders and cuts. The CCPP is grateful for John’s services, hard work, and dedication to the program. He will be missed and we are wishing him the best for his new endeavors. CCPP Budwood can be ordered directly online or by mail or fax using the forms available at the CCPP website (http://www.ccpp.ucr.edu/budwood/budwood.php). To order online, you just log in to your account. If you do not have an account or you have any questions for the online budwood ordering system please email Rock at: christiano@ucdavis.edu .To order by mail/fax, please send the Screenhouse and/or Early Release forms (http://ccpp.ucr.edu/budwood/orderforms.php), including (http://www.ccpp.ucr.edu/budwood/waiver-screen.htm), to: Attn: Rock Cristiano Citrus Clonal Protection Program Lindcove Research & Extension Center University of California 22963 Carson Avenue Exeter, CA 93221 the “Waiver and Release” agreement Or fax it: +1 559 592-5947 Remember, for Screenhouse Budwood, a minimum order of 12 buds per variety is required and, for Early Release Budwood, the maximum limit is 12 buds per variety per order. The entire order must have a minimum of 36 buds. For varieties licensed by the Regents of University of California, marked with “*”in the budwood list, you must first execute an agreement with the university. For Citrus License Agreements, please contact Joyce Patrona at the UC Riverside Office of Technology Commercialization (OTC): Joyce Patrona, Assistant Licensing Officer Office of Technology Commercialization 200 University Office Building Riverside, CA 92521 P: +1 951 827-2524 F: +1 951 827-4483 E: joyce.patrona@ucr.edu Looking forward to working with you.

I do not think that in the modern globalized world the quarantine is an appropriate measure to stop the spread of diseases. We need to find the way to treat them altogether.
Specially when the disease (like HLB) is already established ( the situation in economically important citrus areas in US).
May be I am over exaggerating, but all these US restrictions are in fact the artificial barriers against the foreign and internal competitors.
The collectors of antique varieties are collateral victims.

Ilya, of course not. What California is doing, is trying to buy time, while (international) researchers race to find a cure or management for HLB. I don't think anyone thinks this is a permanent management for HLB. Or, for any other agricultural disease. Also, to clarify, HLB is NOT established here in the state of California. There was one, isolated instance that did not occur as a result of an infected ACP, but as a result of a hobbyist who decided to do a favor for a neighbor, and grafted an infected piece of foreign, smuggled in pummelo budwood to their tree. To date, no other instances of HLB have been found. Just that one branch of that tree.

You have to understand a few things about California's commercial agriculture - California's Central Valley is responsible for growing about 1/3 of all the commercial produce grown in the entire United States of America. This is a staggering percentage, if you consider how large the United States is, and how much of our midwest states are devoted to agriculture. As well as how small, geographically, the Central Valley is. The Central Valley covers approximately 22,500 square miles (58,000 km2), about 13.7% of California's total land area (slightly smaller than the state of West Virginia). To compare it to where you live, it is about 1/10 the size of France (France is 260,558 sq miles (674,843 km²)) but could easily feed your country (and it does, partially). For those of you who live in Europe, I would venture to say this concept is nearly impossible for you to understand or imagine. Think of it as our "Mesopotamia" of the United States. The food grown there feeds the United States as well as much is exported to other countries. There are billions and billions of dollars at stake, as well as hundreds of thousands of jobs on the line. The California Central Valley produces about $13 billion worth of food products annually, according to the American Farmland Trust. The state of California IS agriculture, and the state will go to great lengths to protect its most valuable industry.

So, you can certainly understand why a handful of people who would like to collect "antique fruit trees" are going to have to take a back seat to our mighty industry. Way, way too much at stake for hobbyists to possibly do something to jeopardize such a monolith of an industry that affects so many millions of people. that being said, there are some processes that have been put into place to allow hobbyists to continue what they love to do, but in a manner that hopefully will safeguard our precious agriculture here in the state. The CCPP is one of those. I think that some of the "new guard" at the CCPP will work towards adding more rare and "antique" cultivars to their clean collection, and we can then order clean budwood to propagate some of those "antique" varieties in a way that will protect not only our OWN collections, but our precious commercial agriculture. The California commercial citrus industry learned a lot about how Florida managed HLB, and are trying to prevent the same catastrophe from occurring here in California. I applaud them for being smart, and taking away some very critical "lessons learned". It is protecting my precious citrus collection as well as the entire California commercial citrus industry, albeit we're on borrowed time. They know it, and are working frantically to come up with a solution for HLB.

Patty, very well stated. - Millet