Shop Products
Houzz Logo Print
ritaweeda

News on Citrus Greening

ritaweeda
9 years ago

Just saw some news on Citrus Greening. It's not a complete cure but a temporary treatment to prolong the life of infected trees. It's a treatment developed at IFAS. I've included a link from Bay News 9.

Here is a link that might be useful: IFAS Steam Treatment

Comments (5)

  • Michael AKA Leekle2ManE
    9 years ago

    This article was echoed in my local paper. Two points that bother me are:

    1) The treatment does not kill the disease, just abates the symptoms. So you still have an infected tree capable of affecting more. And to go with this...

    2) The treatment may actually attract more psyllid flies. So not only are you just helping the tree to limp along, you very well could be helping the disease to spread even faster.

  • ritaweeda
    Original Author
    9 years ago

    Who knows. It's just like I just found out that there is a foreign beetle that they have introduced around here to irradicate the Air Potato Vine. Don't get me wrong, I would like to see it go, but when they introduce foreign bugs it reminds me of Love Bugs and we all know what a pain they are. Supposedly this beetle only eats air potato vines but are they SURE about that? What if they run out of air potatoes and decide to start eating our food potatoes?? They are also working on a bug that eats skunk vine, another one I'd like to see gone, but what are the long term results? Just like years ago they brought in the Melaleuca trees to sop up the Everglades, now they are trying to irradicate those, then there are the Australian pines they planted all over the coast lines, same thing.

  • Michael AKA Leekle2ManE
    9 years ago

    Yes, I know. And the thing many people don't think about with all these introduced 'controls' to invasive plants and animals is that they will eventually be JUST a control. In nature, one organism rarely completely eradicates its food source. Eventually a balance is found. Let's just take Air Potato for an example. Eventually the population of the beetles might grow enough to reduce the number of vines, but as the vines reduce in numbers, so too will the population of the beetles until there is just enough vine to support and sustain a population of the beetles. And the part that I am curious about, they say the beetle eats the vine, not that it 'kills' the vine. So every root left by the beetle could end up growing right back. All we might eventually end up with is a large population of beetles sustained by a large supply of vines. So the vines might not disappear, they just won't drape over the trees like kudzu.

  • apapjim
    9 years ago

    There is an update in the Nov issue of Discovery magazine. An agriculture engineer at U of F discovered that heating the trees to 108 degrees for 90 seconds significantly reduced the number of bacteria without harming the fruit. Some trees even returned to 100 % productivity. How did they heat the trees? By putting translucent tarps over them and letting the sun do the work, Now they are doing it with steam but for small individual trees seems like tarps would work. Read the article and decide yourself.

  • inulover (9A Inverness, Florida)
    9 years ago

    So Places like Palm Springs could be the next mecca for citrus? Average July temperature is 108.

    Solarizing dwarf varieties in Florida shouldn't be all that hard, if it really works.

Sponsored
EA Home Design
Average rating: 5 out of 5 stars69 Reviews
Loudoun County's Trusted Kitchen & Bath Designers | Best of Houzz