Millet,
In answer your question about the steps UCR, CCPP, and California Citrus Nurseries are doing to protect their collections:
First off, California is unique because the citrus nursery industry here has been in conducting a mother stock testing and certification program for nearly 25 years. In most other citrus growing regions this was not taking place before HLB was known to be present. Each year, reputable citrus nurseries voluntarily have all of their mother trees tested for viroids and tristeza. This is done using PCR and live tree tests where material from the tree being sampled is budded onto another live tree. These trees are then grown on and analyzed at various points in the future to see if something develops. Even though the testing to this point has not been looking specifically for the HLB bacteria, if it had been present the test would have yielded some strange results triggering further investigation and alerting nurseries that there was a problem with a tree. This is currently a voluntary program, but there is legislation slated to be enacted soon making the testing and registration program mandatory for all California Citrus Nurseries. We are lucky because we are ahead of the game in this regard. Most of us know that right now our mother trees are clean because we have been testing them for so long and nearly everyone is in the process of moving their mother stock under screen before its too late.
The CCPP collection is being grown under insect proof conditions and is known to be one of the best sources of clean propagation material in the world. CCPP regularly provides budwood to other states who are in the process of developing their own foundation blocks. They turn to CCPP because they know the trees are clean. It takes nearly 10 years for a new variety to make it to the point of release for propagation. During that time the plants are grown in quarantine and subjected to numerous tests for every known citrus disease. If they ever found anything the plant would be destroyed long before it could infect anything else.
The UCR collection is being preserved as germplasm. For more information check out
http://www.ars.usda.gov/research/publications/publications.htm?SEQ_NO_115=214960
You can be sure that there is not HLB present in material from the CCPP or in trees from reputable California Citrus nurseries. If you want to know about what a given nursery does to make sure their trees are clean, just ask them. Also, it is important to note that to date no psyllid has been found on any citrus nursery stock in California. The finds have been limited to back yard trees and 1 commercial grove.
It is also important to note that to date, none of the psyllids collected in California have tested positive for HLB. This is very critical, because researchers say that in Florida, they were able to detect the presences of HLB in psyllids 2 years before they found the first tree with visual symptoms.
Millet, I would say if you really want to protect your collection dont get any propagation material from unregistered sources. Trees that have never been tested are wild cards, they could have anything!
