Not monitoring your plants for one virus could decimate the orange-growing industry in California.
The threat comes from HLB, also known as citrus greening, a tree virus spread by the very tiny Asian citrus psyllid. According to the University of Florida, citrus greening wiped out 90% of orange trees in Florida, devastating farmers there and spooking citrus farmers in California.
"It's not the only pest we deal with, but it is the most significant," Andy Lyall, a citrus farmer in California, said.
Lyall has been growing citrus for generations in San Diego, and says it's a community effort to keep the virus from spreading, an effort that includes treatment three times a year.
A recent lawsuit illustrates another risk facing the industry. The state agricultural department recently destroyed nearly $3 million worth of trees from Evergreen Nursery in North County because there was a chance the trees could be infected. Evergreen says the state told them 10 trees had tested positive for HLB 5 miles away, which fits the state's protocols for destroying or quarantining trees. The nursery's CEO says these protocols aren't based in science.
The problem was that quarantining the trees the way the state wanted was not viable, since there were so many trees and the quarantine was either impossible, given the space the farm had, or would have cost the nursery millions. That's around a third of Evergreen's overall stock, and the nursery doesn't have crop insurance.
"We don't have any revenue, we're going to have to cut back on the employees," Mark Collins, the owner of Evergreen, said.
If you notice signs of citrus greening, call your county agricultural department.
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