This article presents some fresh ideas and hope on how to treat a HLB infected plant.

As I read through this article it is hard to decide if they cured or delayed the HLB. In some places it reads as a cure. Maybe they are just needing more evaluation time but this seems promising.

http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/pr/2013/130805.htm

Darkman, you are right, the article does sound like a cure is found and that would most certainly be a great news! Although, they don't say what seedlings were used in the study and one may suspect that different types of citrus might react differently to the treatment. Let's wait and hope the results will be confirmed.

Btw, a stupid question: to what temperature citrus can be heated before baking it?

Well I think it is right at 112F. They said that a reduction for four hours allowed the leaves to rejuvenate.

Another thing I believe they were saying is that the disease starts in the leaf and slowly over time migrates to the roots. If I understood them correctly once it gets to the roots it is game over but until them heat treatment could help.

The key to all of this is a definitive test that can test the leaves and detect the disease years before it gets to the roots. As I understand it there is not a test yet although California is working on some promising results.

Very intriguing results, although I would be hesitant of calling it a "cure" at this point. Definitely more testing is necessary, but it could easily become a piece in the puzzle to combat HLB. I wonder how much $$$ this would cost on a large scale? The cost certainly would not be insignificant, given the number of "tents" and the labor requirements to move them around in a grove.

So how would it ever be possible to heat a orange grove. Heating might work on a tree or two, but some groves are a mile long and wide. - Millet

I would envision circus tent like contraptions on wheels moved from tree to tree in a grove. Similar things have been done before. Here's an old pic of a mobile hydrogen cyanide gas fumigating tent for citrus used waaaaay back when in CA. I wonder how many of the laborers keeled over before they figured out this wasn't the best idea? Similar modern setups for heat treatment of trees could be used but this could be quite expensive, imagine doing this to several hundred thousand trees!

It would take a life time heat treating the commercial groves just in the single state of Florida. Single groves can have 500,000 trees plus. Florida nurseries in 2011 sold 3.1 million new citrus trees as HLB replacement trees in a single year. It would require an literal army of workers with tens of thousands of heat tents, which would be quickly followed by millions of Phyllids reinfecting the trees. On top of that millions of infected trees, not yet showing any disease symptoms of HLB, (it takes two year for symptoms up show up) would be passed over as a "healthy' tree. I'm very dubious. - Millet

Millet, I concur. I struggle to see how such a setup could be profitable on a commercial scale... maybe if citrus got up to something crazy like $10/pound, lets hope it doesn't come to that.

If it only allows individuals to save their trees that's still fantastic news.

Darkman, citrus trees growing in the Southern California desert frequently withstand summer temperatures of 120F. -Millet

Although a citrus tree does not die, as a point of information, the accepted high temperature where all citrus growth stops is 100.4 F (38 C). - Millet

Cool,,, Glad Arizona is hot enough