Citrus Greening Disease Spreads To Florida's Commercial Groves - Reuters

[hatrack]

BONITA SPRINGS, Fla. - Citrus greening, a tree-killing disease first found in Florida last year, has spread into the state's commercial groves and could be a bigger threat than the canker that growers have battled for a decade, industry officials said Thursday.

Greening is a bacterial disease rapidly spread by an insect, the citrus psyllid. It moved into Florida just as the state's US$9.1 billion citrus industry abandoned efforts to eradicate citrus canker and turned instead to learning to live with that disease. "We cannot live with citrus greening," a University of Florida citrus researcher, Dr. Jim Graham, told growers gathered in Bonita Springs for the Florida Citrus Mutual industry conference. "We're not doomed, but you can't just sit there with your hands folded."

Greening was discovered in a backyard grapefruit tree in Miami-Dade County in August, the first time the devastating scourge was confirmed in the United States. The infection is now present in all the urban southeast Florida counties and has spread into central Florida's commercial groves, though so far at low incidence, Graham said.

Neither canker nor greening harms humans. Canker is caused by windborne bacteria that weaken trees and make the fruit drop prematurely. Greening makes the fruit unpalatable and rapidly kills the trees.

EDIT

http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/36728/story.htm

[opihimoimoi]

1. OH OH Bad news for the Orange Grapefruit Ind....poor initial Handling

of the prob resulted in spread, now its all fucked up...Thousands will be laid off....maybe hundreds of thousands...

Better start planting mangos and lychee.....