Citrus Growers Forum

JoeReal · Posted: Sat 18 Oct, 2008 6:03 pm

Millet wrote:

Joe, I hope your correct. Salicylic acid might be beneficial for the control/cure of HLB. or it might not be beneficial, I don't know. However, I cannot help to think if the answer to greening was so simple the scientists at UCR, the University of Florida and USDA would know all about salicylic acid and would have published something by now. I always think the same thing when a person tells me of their miraculous cure for a tragic disease, I always wonder why the cure is unknown to the Mayo Clinic. Just some thoughts - Like I say, I'm certainly no expert on citrus greening. - Millet

It is unknown, simply because researchers and scientists haven't looked at it more closely or simply shrugged off what would have been a good idea. Most often, we know that salicylic acid helps plants cope temperature related stress, so the application for strengthening the plants under HLB may have been overlooked, or perhaps tried earlier, but not long enough.

It is the same with viruses in computers. Microsoft hires several thousand programmers, the best they can get. But the problem is, there are several hundred million tinkerers and hackers out there, by their own spare time not really paid, and the chances of one of them discovering a security hole is several thousand times than what the best of Microsoft can do.

It is the same amongst us citrus hobbyists and some farmers would love to tinker outside the box. There are much more of us compared to researchers, and chances are we discover things not in the books, and not in the established scientific research institutions. Take for example various outstanding cultivars that many were found and discovered by ordinary people, growing in their backyard, or by accident, or by hobby style hybridization. The discoveries are not exclusive of those in the scientific field, but often revealed to those whom God have chosen.

That is why I am glad that many researchers and scientists have flocked to the site to investigate and to start their own formal scientific inquiries. Who knows, this might be just a wild goose chase when it comes to HLB. But the apparent proof is more than compelling, and there are some related literature as to how plants can benefit from salicylic acid when under stress. We found evidence during drought, high temperature, cold temperature and the effects are primarily beneficial. If you don't apply, some plants would produce their own pain killers. A plant infected with a disease is under stress, and so naturally, if you keep them upbeat, and invigorated with proper diet, they could come through the attacks of HLB. When HLB is there to stay, and depending on economics, you will have to spray SA for the productive lifetime, as long as it is feasible to do so.

I have observed from various crops infected with diseases that they can recover even if there is no cure for the disease once it sets in, like for example in rice, infected with tungro virus. The rice seems to be decimated, and if you do nothing, you yield nothing once it is infected. But some farmers tried their remedies anyway, and applied vigorous regimen of fertilizer on top of what has been applied, and this time boost it with micronutrients. The plants did recover and bore normal yield of grains. How is this possible? The disease was there, the same plant infected, the same plant recovered! So the scientists from International Rice Research Institute where I used to work repeated what they observed in those remote fields, and tested them carefully, and have repeated the same results. It made us rethink about the mechanisms of diseases and how the pathogens affect the plants and how nutrition can influence its recovery. Thus new knowledge are gained by testing what is somehow contradictory to our notion about diseases in plants. This was published in several scientific newsletters, and so I am open to many possibilities that even if greening disease will be here someday, we can do something about it.