Intense Inspections of Urban Citrus Trees Continue

By Patrick Cavanaugh, Editor

Joel Nelsen is president and CEO of California Citrus Mutual, based in Exeter. He told California Ag Today recently that there is an “active plan to look for trees harboring Asian Citrus Psyllids (ACP) infected Huanglongbing (HLB) trees in urban areas because we’re looking for nobody else across this country, let alone in the southern hemisphere, to look for infected trees in the urban area. Mexico and Brazil didn’t do it. We’re doing it.”

Joel Nelsen

The hope is that they find HLB and stop it there.

“Commercial growers are under tight testing programs to combat the Asian Citrus Psyllid. As far as it relates to commercial growers, we’re doing enough trapping that we’re not finding what we call hot spots of Asian Citrus Psyllids,” Nelsen said. “Secondarily and most importantly, we have a very strict clonal protection program, so growers are only allowed to access trees after they’ve gone through a rigorous testing program at both the nursery and the rootstock from the university.”

Nelsen said that the chances of a grower introducing the insect into an area is rather slim; it’s more often likely that the disease will be introduced to a grove.

Testing is random and more lab space is needed.

“Most of it’s been random because it is an intensive program. We’re analyzing roughly 20,000 leaves and twigs every month,” Nelsen explained. “We’re analyzing several thousand ACP every month. In fact, our lab capacity is capped, and one of the discussions that we’re having is to identify what labs can do what and whether or not we need to expand the number of labs doing business.”

“So we are looking at additional lab space, and in fact, we have already contracted with the University of Arizona Lab in Tucson  and maybe we’ll consider using private labs to do the initial work,” Nelsen said. “Now, they’re not going to be able to confirm whether or not an ACP is there, but they go in and evaluate that twig or green waste waste and if in fact there is a suspicion, then you send in the California Department of Food and Agriculture folks.”