Well, we here in California were afraid of this day. It has come.


CDFA Public Affairs:
HUANGLONGBING DETECTED IN HACIENDA HEIGHTS AREA OF LOS ANGELES COUNTY

Not good news.

Bordering on horrifying, Laaz.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/agency-citrus-disease-killed-millions-trees-fla-brazil-16041854#.T3ZLDdlMdyU

I'm hoping my relatively isolated location in NorCal will help it from spreading to my small collection for a long time.

More information about how HLB was detected. Kudos to the astute homeowner who was monitoring their citrus!! I find this very interesting, as this was the exact fear voiced by the folks at UCR - that HLB was lurking in a homeowner's yard, and going unnoticed. The disease was actually found in the psyllid and not the tree. The tree that the psyllid was found on will be destroyed, of course, and the general area will be treated and monitored, but someone was watching their citrus trees. Good for them!

Recorder Online: Deadly citrus disease detected in Hacienda Heights

That link didn't work for me because it contained the forum URL as well. I'll try.

http://www.recorderonline.com/news/citrus-52236-hacienda-heights.html/

The article makes reference to "mistakes made in Florida" and says the disease can be stopped here in California. What mistakes were made? Did they wait to long before destroying infected trees, etc.? Is it realistic to expect they can stop the disease here? With such large population centers with probably folks bring in citrus across borders daily it just seems like an impossible task.

Thanks, Harvey, not enough coffee I guess, didn't check my copy and paste. I think the mistakes were in how they monitored for HLB. Got very wide spread very quickly. Also, I think the massive "scorched earth" methodology cost commercial growers thousands of trees that were destroyed when perhaps this drastic technique was not necessary. Perhaps some of our Florida members will have more info about "lessons learned" in Florida, who was hit first and hit hard.

One of the somewhat obscure species some of us plant nuts grow is white sapote, Casimiroa edulus and I was looking at the list of hosts on CDFA's web site to see if it was listed. At http://www.cdfa.ca.gov/plant/acp/ they have a partial host list dated from 2008 and Casimiroa is not listed. But, when I search for Casimiroa and Huanglongbing, I find it is also subject to the same disease problem from information posted at http://www.plantwise.org/?dsid=54914&loadmodule=plantwisedatasheet&page=4270&site=234 so I wonder if CDFA folks are even checking everything that might be infected. I would hope that they're looking at everything in the Rutaceae family.

I believe, very sadly, that HLB will spread to every corner of California. A citrus tree can be infected with HLB for a span of up to 2 years before the infected tree shows any symptoms. By that time psyllids could already spread HLB to thousands of trees. It did not take long for the psyllid to travel form the south of Florida up to South Carolina and west into Louisiana. My in ground Lemon, Lime, Mandarin, Satsuma, Grapefruit and Kumquat trees here in Colorado fortunately are all protected due to Colorado very cold winters. I pray for all our fellow citrus brothers and sisters in California. - Millet (294 BO-)

Well, the good news in this, Millet, is they did not find an infected tree. They found a psyllid that was carrying HLB. However, that being said, do I think we have infected trees? Yes. So does UCR. We just think that we haven't found them, yet, since over 90% of citrus trees grown in the state of California reside in backyards. So, it really is just a matter of time before we find infected trees. And if there are psyllids in the area, which their certainly are, since it is the most likely way this psyllid ended up carrying HLB, then we've really got a serious problem. What I truly hope is that they are much more aggressive about treating backyard citrus. The commercial growers are on board, and have been either monitoring their groves, or treating for ASP, or both for some time, now. We went through this horror decades ago with the Mediterranean Fruit Fly. I remember all the in-fighting here in the state. The state was dragging its feet about treating neighborhoods - who wants to get sprayed with Malathion?? Huge public outcry. Finally the federal government stepped in and we all got sprayed. I remember having to either cover your car or park your car in a garage to avoid your car getting sprayed with the sticky spray. It was awful, but it did get the MFF under control. This is where Florida was not agressive enough, if you read some of the articles. The author quoted a few folks and the insinuation is around the spraying of neighborhoods. It will be very interesting to see what the CDFA and the USDA decide to do to keep this in check. Meanwhile, I am going to see what sort of regular controls I should begin to institute, to spray for ACP. UCR's Citrus Variety Collection has instituted a routine spraying program for ACP. I think we home growers in Los Angeles, Ventura, Riverside, San Bernardino and San Diego counties might want to adopt this program now. I'm not a fan of having to use insecticides, but I don't want to have to burn all my citrus trees, either.

Where there are psyllids there will eventually be greening. This is what I believe.

It's too late for control. It's up to management now.

The only solution is a CURE!

I just hope we get it soon enough.

Psyllid eradication...

Patty, I read (in the initial release and subsequent reports, I believe) that the tree in question was infected with HLB.

The quarantine area is now released:
http://www.pasadenastarnews.com/news/ci_20326694/state-officials-release-map-quarantine-deadly-citrus-disease?source=rss