Florida Oranges

[red]

I have heard on the news that Florida Orange Trees will only produce 1/3 of the oranges they regularly produce.  There must be more to this story.

[Raider Bill]

Citrus greening.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citrus_greening_disease

We ride throughout central Florida regularly. Years ago there were miles upon miles of citrus groves. When on bloom you'd be hard pressed to find a better smell.

Now there are miles and miles of dead and dying trees.

It's sad.

[caveman]

Red, The imported citrus psyllid vectors the greening disease (Huanglongbing).  If I recall correctly, the imported psyllid came into the U.S. through the port of Miami in 2002 and with all of the hurricanes Florida experienced during 2004, the little insects were distributed all over the citrus growing regions of the state.

There were teams of scientists working at the Lake Alfred Citrus Research Station trying to solve the greening problem.  So far, the psyllids are winning.  There were a lot of suggestions such as planting guava bushes between the citrus trees, injecting the trees with antibiotics (may have some degree of effectiveness but opens another can of worms), treating the soil with Temik pesticide, and other measures like locating individual trees with genetic resistance to the disease.

We pushed up our school's grove of over 100 trees a couple of years ago due to greening.  My yard citrus trees have the disease now.  The citrus nurseries for propagation and bud wood have had to drastically change their operations.  Off to work-more doom and gloom for the citrus industry later.

[alabama]

That is very sad to hear.

[sawguy21]

Hard to find good oranges in the stores and they are expensive. It's no wonder with those kind of problems.

[fishpharmer]

Sad news.  I did notice the recent 5lb sack of oranges I bought from Sam's club had little stickers that read "Grown in South Africa."   I was surprised.  Last bag, I made sure were grown in USA.

[caveman]

Our county's FFA land judging contest was held in a citrus grove between Winter Haven and Lake Wales yesterday.  It was refreshing to be able to walk through an orange grove, Hamlins I think, that did not show signs of HLB (Greening).  I am sure they have it but the folks taking care of the grove evidently have a very good spray program and they are replacing trees as they decline.  The oranges were juicy and sweet (probably not as good as the ones in Canada, but good nonetheless).

  

 

[petefrom bearswamp]

I had been wondering why almost all of the groves i passed in FL this past Feb looked so poor.