HLB Detected Again in San Gabriel

46 HLB Positive Trees in California

News Release from Citrus Insider

The California Department of Food and Agriculture crews conducting intensive, risk-based surveys detected eight citrus trees confirmed to be infected with Huanglongbing. All trees were in the core area of San Gabriel where HLB has previously been detected. This brings the total number of HLB-positive trees in California to 46.

CDFA routinely conducts HLB surveys throughout the state based on a risk model that considers factors that may make an area more likely to have a presence of the disease. CDFA has further fine-tuned this approach by increasing the number of samples pulled from citrus trees that are considered high risk. This strategic approach – developed by the CDFA lead diagnostician with input from the Citrus Pest & Disease Prevention Program and leading scientific researchers – has helped pinpoint infected trees.

State and local crews are building relationships with residents in the area, which not only helps gain access to properties, but also results in swift removal of trees identified as having HLB. While removal of diseased trees is mandatory, positive homeowner relationships encourage cooperation. Of the eight trees recently detected, seven have already been removed or been scheduled for removal by CDFA. Crews are contacting the property owner of the remaining citrus tree Tuesday, March 28, and will pursue quick removal.

In 2016, CDFA collected nearly 50,000 plant samples and nearly 80,000 Asian citrus psyllid samples to test for HLB. Since sample collection began in 2008, more than 400,000 plant and psyllid samples have been collected and processed. This diligent work has contributed to quick detection and eradication of diseased trees.

As a part of the Citrus Pest & Disease Prevention Program, CDFA will continue surveying and sampling the area for HLB and keep the industry abreast of finds as they occur.

Patrick Cavanaugh2021-05-12T11:05:17-07:00March 29th, 2017|

ACP Found Near Juice Plant

More Asian Citrus Psyllids Found in Tulare County, 10 ACPs near Juice Plant

By Patrick Cavanaugh, Deputy Editor, and Laurie Greene, Editor

Announced Today, more Asian Citrus Psyllids (ACP) were found recently in several Tulare County traps, two of which were adjacent to an orange juice plant near Tipton.

“There were a few [ACPs] on sticky traps on a residential tree, one in a commercial grove, and even more concerning, four on one and six on a second sticky card near the juice plant,” said Marilyn Kinoshita, Tulare County ag commissioner.” ACP is known to vector Huanglongbing (HLB) disease, a disease that is fatal for citrus trees.

Marilyn Kinoshita, Tulare County ag commissioner

“The juice plant ACP finds could have come from southern California trees, most likely from Ventura, Orange, Riverside, and Imperial Counties, that were stripped of crop and did not go through a shed,” said Kinoshita, referring to a necessary cleaning protocol. “It’s very frustrating because there’s a certain protocol in shipping citrus but not everybody follows it.”

“When citrus is field-run [from the field to the packing shed],” continued Kinoshita, “the fruit should be separated from stems and leaves—which may harbor ACPs—then cleaned and manipulated over rollers before being packed for shipping or transported in bulk by truck to the juice plant.”

“So it’s a real concern finding ACPs at the Tipton juice plant,” Kinoshita explained, “because it is isolated from our citrus belt and they are the first ACPs found near a plant. It means that the psyllids possibly hitchhiked to the plant in Tipton, which is right along Highway 99. Even if the fruit had been cleaned, the psyllids, which are strong fliers, could have ended up in the cab of the truck and transported to Tulare County,” noted Kinoshita.

Kinoshita noted protection spray protocols are now in motion. “We’ve got two active programs, residential treatments in unison with our orchard treatments, and those are all managed by a treatment coordinator who works with our treatment groups. These are smaller groups of growers, so their treatments are hopefully done within a 2-week period to cover an area and try to control this pest.”

“The Number One citrus county in California doesn’t need ACP,” said Kinoshita, “and heaven forbid they come in while infected with HLB disease! Already about 20 trees have tested positive for the fatal HLB—all in southern California, starting with Hacienda Heights in April 2012, with more found in and around San Gabriel residential areas, last year in July and this year in February.”

Kinoshita advocated for everyone to stay vigilant and keep educating—not only the citizens of the state, but these transporters too. “They need to be more careful,” said Kinoshita. “All equipment that moves though the citrus groves must be cleaned before moving into another grove. It’s going to take everyone’s cooperation.”

“There is so much capability for [ACP] hitchhiking into this County where we are ground zero for potential problems—for the sheer number of packing sheds, orange groves and juice plants. So it’s a pretty difficult situation, but fortunately we’ve got a system that is in place; we just have to keep at it and not let our guard down,” she said.

California Ag Today2021-05-12T11:03:02-07:00May 3rd, 2016|

Breaking News: New HLB Infected Tree in San Gabriel

Breaking News

Citrus Insider Reports New HLB Confirmed in San Gabriel

Today, two additional trees in have tested positive for Huanglongbing (HLB). The two trees, an orange and a kumquat, are on separate properties but are both within the core area in San Gabriel where 10 diseased trees were confirmed last summer. Given the close proximity, there will not be a quarantine expansion.

One of the HLB-positive trees has already been removed and California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) officials are in the process of contacting the other homeowner to schedule tree removal. Agriculture officials are working quickly in the area.

Citrus trees in San Gabriel had already been treated for the Asian citrus psyllid (ACP) within the last few weeks as part of CDFA’s routine HLB response. ACP populations are closely monitored in areas where HLB has been detected and treatments occur if there is a noted increase in population size. Since trees have been recently protected, no additional treatments will take place at this time. Instead, CDFA will focus on sampling extensively in the area. Much of the area has already been sampled and CDFA’s lab has identified all samples from San Gabriel as high priority.

The Citrus Pest & Disease Prevention Program is working with the Los Angeles County Agricultural Commissioner’s office and CDFA to develop a multilingual informational flyer to notify residents of the significance of these finds and potential implications to other citrus trees in the area. CDFA staff will distribute this information as they go door-to-door sampling and surveying.

More information will be shared as it is available. In the meantime, the citrus industry is encouraged to keep a critical eye on all plant material moving into or out of your groves and recommends taking the following steps so collectively, as a team, we can all save our citrus trees.

-Remove all leaves and stems

-Shake out picking bags

-Inspect harvesting equipment

-Educate fieldworkers

-Get on board with area-wide treatments

__________________

Additional Links:

Citrus Insider

Save Our Citrus

California Citrus Mutual

California Ag Today2021-05-12T11:03:04-07:00February 3rd, 2016|

URGENT HLB Quarantine UPDATE

HLB Quarantine Update

A Huanglongbing (HLB) quarantine is now in effect in part of Los Angeles County following the detection of HLB in four citrus trees.

On July 10, a kumquat tree on a residential property was confirmed to be infected with the incurable HLB disease. After extensive surveying and testing in the area, three more diseased trees were found nearby. The four diseased trees were on four separate properties close to one another. The tree varieties include kumquat, lime, mandarin and calamondin.

California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) has already removed two of the diseased trees and is currently working with the homeowners at the other two properties to remove those trees as soon as possible. See the CDFA press release below for more details on the resulting quarantine.

QUARANTINE FOR HUANGLONGBING DECLARED IN SAN GABRIEL, LOS ANGELES COUNTY

SACRAMENTO, July 22, 2015 – An 87-square mile quarantine in the San Gabriel area of Los Angeles County has been added to the existing huanglongbing (HLB) quarantine in the Hacienda Heights-area following the detection of the citrus disease huanglongbing, or citrus greening.

Additional information, including a map of the quarantine zone, is available at the CDFA Save Our Citrus website. The quarantine boundaries are: on the north, E. Orange Grove Boulevard; on the east, N. Lemon Avenue; on the west, Griffin Avenue; and on the south W. La Habra Boulevard.

This area is part of a much larger quarantine already in place for the Asian citrus psyllid (ACP), the pest that spreads bacteria causing huanglongbing (HLB). The new quarantine will prohibit the movement of all nursery stock out of the area, while maintaining existing provisions allowing the movement of only commercially cleaned and packed citrus fruit. Any fruit that is not commercially cleaned and packed, including residential citrus, must not be removed from the property on which it is grown, although it may be processed and/or consumed on the premises.

“The success of any quarantine depends on cooperation from those affected,” said CDFA Secretary Karen Ross. “The stakes couldn’t be higher for California citrus. We urge residents in the San Gabriel-area to do all they can to comply.”

CDFA, the USDA and the Los Angeles County Agricultural Commissioner’s continue their work to investigate the source of the disease, to survey and test for it throughout the Los Angeles Basin, and to continue with ground treatment of citrus trees within 800 meters of the find sites – which began earlier this week. In the long term, the strategy is to control the spread of ACPs while researchers work to find a cure for the disease.

Huanglongbing has been confirmed four times in San Gabriel, in a kumquat tree on a residential property, in a lime tree on an adjacent residential property, and in calamondin and mandarin trees on residential properties in close proximity to the original find. The disease is bacterial and attacks the vascular system of plants. It does not pose a threat to humans or animals. The Asian citrus psyllid can spread the bacteria as the pest feeds on citrus trees and other related plants. Once a tree is infected, there is no cure; it typically declines and dies within a few years.

Huanglongbing is known to be present in Mexico and in parts of the southern U.S. Florida first detected the disease in 2005, and the University of Florida estimates that the disease causes an average loss of 7,513 jobs per year, and has cost growers $2.994 billion in lost revenue since then. Huanglongbing has also been detected in Georgia, Louisiana, South Carolina and Texas as well as Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

A total of 15 states or territories are under full or partial quarantine due to the presence of the ACP: Alabama, American Samoa, Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Guam, Hawaii, Louisiana, Mississippi, Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, South Carolina, Texas, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

The Asian citrus psyllid was first detected in California in 2008 and quarantines for the pest are now in place in 17 California counties. If Californians believe they have seen evidence of huanglongbing in local citrus trees, they are asked to please call CDFA’s toll-free pest hotline at 1-800-491-1899 FREE. For more information on the Asian citrus psyllid and huanglongbing, please visit: http://www.cdfa.ca.gov/phpps/acp/.

California Ag Today2016-05-31T19:28:09-07:00July 23rd, 2015|

HLB Found in LA

Huanglongbing Detected on LA County Pre-Symptomatic Kumquat Tree

By Patrick Cavanaugh, Farm Director; Laurie Greene, Editor, California Ag Today

#CitrusMatters (provided by Bayer CropScience, in partnership with California Citrus Mutual)

“It’s disappointing, but fortunately it was found in a residential area,” commented Joel Nelsen, president of California Citrus Mutual (CCM), on the second discovery of Huanglongbing [wong-long-bing] (HLB), or citrus greening, in California. CCM refers to HLB as “a death sentence for California citrus” as once the plant is infected with this bacterial disease, there is no known cure.

Joel Nelsen, president, California Citrus Mutual

“HLB was detected in plant material taken from a kumquat tree in a residential neighborhood in the San Gabriel area of Los Angeles County,” Nelson stated. “The 20-year-old tree was in the front yard of a residence and had not yet shown any symptoms.”

The San Gabriel neighborhood is located about 15 miles from Hacienda Heights, where the first HLB case in the state was detected in 2012 in a residential citrus tree. The An aggressive trapping program for the Asian citrus psyllid (ACP), a pest known to spread the HLB bacteria as it feeds on citrus trees and other plants, has been ongoing ever since this first finding, including in the San Gabriel area.

“It’s fortunate that the homeowner is quite cooperative,” said Nelsen, “and other neighborhood homeowners are allowing officials to run PCR tests (polymerase chain reaction) on samples of their trees to determine if the disease is present.” PCR analysis is a sensitive research technique for detecting and identifying small numbers of bacteria in plants via DNA amplification.

Nelsen declared, “This find is exactly what the Citrus Pest and Disease Prevention Program is designed to do. PCR testing of a random sampling of leaves and stems in the area, as our program prescribes, enabled us to hit a positive” before symptoms appeared.

“We do not know how long the tree had been diseased,” said Nelsen, “but we do know that we have been trapping ACPs there for a long time and had not found any HLB before. You do not want to

find anything,” Nelsen said, “but when you do, you want to find it before it becomes an epidemic.”

In a statement on Friday, California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) Secretary Karen Ross said, “Citrus is a cherished part of our landscape and our shared history, as well as a major agricultural crop.” CDFA has been planning and preparing for HLB detections since before the first ACP was detected in the state in 2008. Quarantines are now in place in 17 California counties.

Los Angeles County Agricultural Commissioner Kurt Floren will mobilize his team over this week to check on citrus trees in plant nurseries that fall within the 800-meter radius around the infected tree area. A spray protocol is already in place for all citrus trees within the 800-meter radius.

“More traps are going out so we can try to delineate the scope of the problem. Hopefully it will be nothing more than this one tree, like the solitary diseased tree we found in Hacienda Heights,” Nelsen said.

Resources

To support the citrus industry in its fight against HLB, go to California Citrus Mutual Action Center.

For questions about the ACP or HLB, visit or call CDFA’s toll-free pest hotline at 1-800-491-1899.

View the Distribution Map of ACP, HLB and parasites in California published by the UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources.

USDA’s free “Save Our Citrus” iTunes app

Visit the Citrus Pest & Disease Prevention Program.

Verify plant symptoms at USDA’s SaveOurCitrus website.

For information and ACP solutions, go to #citrusmatters, provided by Bayer CropScience, in partnership with California Citrus Mutual

California Ag Today2016-05-31T19:28:11-07:00July 13th, 2015|

BREAKING NEWS ON HUANGLONGBING CITRUS DISEASE

HUANGLONGBING CITRUS DISEASE DETECTED IN SAN GABRIEL AREA OF LOS ANGELES COUNTY
CDFA
Release #15-031

Sacramento, July 10, 2015 – The California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) have confirmed detection of huanglongbing (HLB) citrus disease, or citrus greening. The disease was detected in plant material taken from a kumquat tree in a residential neighborhood in the San Gabriel area of Los Angeles County.

This is the second time HLB has been detected in California. The first detection occurred in 2012 in a residential citrus tree in Hacienda Heights, about 15 miles from San Gabriel.

HLB is a bacterial disease that attacks the vascular system of plants. It does not pose a threat to humans or animals. The Asian citrus psyllid (ACP) can spread the bacteria as the pest feeds on citrus trees and other plants. Once a tree is infected, there is no cure; it typically declines and dies within a few years.

“Citrus is a cherished part of our landscape and our shared history, as well as a major agricultural crop,” said CDFA Secretary Karen Ross. “CDFA is moving quickly to protect the state’s citrus. We have been planning and preparing for HLB detections with our growers and our colleagues at the federal and local levels since before the ACP was first detected here in 2008.”

A CDFA crew has removed and disposed of the infected tree and is preparing to conduct treatment of citrus trees for ACP infestation within 800 meters of the find site. By taking these steps, a critical reservoir of disease and its vectors will be removed, which is essential.

An intensive survey of local citrus trees and psyllids is underway to determine if HLB exists anywhere else in the area. Planning has begun for a quarantine of the area to limit the spread of the disease by restricting the movement of citrus trees, citrus plant parts, green waste, and all citrus fruit except what is commercially cleaned and packed. As part of the

SAVE OUR CITRUS app is a free USDA iPhone to report and identify the four leading citrus diseases: citrus greening, citrus canker, citrus black spot and sweet orange scab. Report your symptoms, upload a photo and citrus experts will respond.

quarantine, citrus and closely related plants at nurseries in the area will be placed on hold.

Residents of quarantine areas are urged not to remove or share citrus fruit, trees, clippings/grafts or related plant material. Citrus fruit may be harvested and consumed on-site.

CDFA, in partnership with the USDA, local agricultural commissioners and the citrus industry, continues to pursue a strategy of controlling the spread of ACPs while researchers work to find a cure for the disease.

HLB is known to be present in Mexico and in parts of the southern U.S. Florida first detected the pest in 1998, and the disease in 2005, and the two have now been detected in all 30 citrus-producing counties in that state. The University of Florida estimates that the disease causes an average loss of 7,513 jobs per year, and has cost growers $2.994 billion in lost revenue since HLB was first detected in that state in 2006.

HLB has also been detected in Georgia, Louisiana, South Carolina and Texas, as well as Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. A total of 15 states or territories are under full or partial quarantine due to the detected presence of the Asian citrus psyllid: Alabama, American Samoa, Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Guam, Hawaii, Louisiana, Mississippi, Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, South Carolina, Texas, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

The ACP was first detected in California in 2008, and quarantines are now in place in 17 California counties. If Californians have questions about the ACP or HLB, they may call CDFA’s toll-free pest hotline at 1-800-491-1899 or visit: http://www.cdfa.ca.gov/phpps/acp/.

Patrick Cavanaugh2016-05-31T19:28:11-07:00July 10th, 2015|

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