Florida citrus growers cannot ship their fruit to California and other citrus-producing states this season because of a federal citrus canker rule that bans shipments to those markets.
"When you take fruit off the tree, it goes into decline. It no longer is a good host for the bacteria," Tim Gottwald, a Fort Pierce-based U.S. Department of Agriculture plant pathologist, told growers Thursday at the Indian River Citrus Seminar.
The two-day meeting, held at the St. Lucie County Fairgrounds, focused on canker control Thursday, as scientists and growers shared information on packinghouse operations, copper sprays, windbreaks and the costs of with living with canker.
Gottwald outlined experiments conducted in Florida - and replicated in Argentina and Brazil under the auspices of a national and international research group - that he said have shattered several canker myths.
The experiments with canker-infected fruit included hitting fruit with a baseball bat and splattering it onto trees; leaving piles of fruit around young trees; and attempting to spread canker from the fruit with wind and rain. Other tests were conducted in packinghouses using infected fruit.
"The research shows canker lesions on fruit is not a pathway. It's not a conduit to move canker around," said Doug Bournique, executive vice president of the Indian River Citrus League. "We are anxious for that research to be ratified."
The Florida citrus industry's goal is for canker to be graded at the packinghouse as just another blemish, Bournique said. Even fruit with visible lesions would not be banned.
Mark DuBois, operations manager at Callery-Judge Grove near Loxahatchee, said his operation has been much more successful in controlling canker on mandarin crops, such as tangerines and honeybells, than on grapefruits. Before the ban, 30 percent of the grove's tangerines were shipped to California.
"The fact we cannot ship fruit to California is killing us," said DuBois, who spoke as part of a panel discussion on canker. "You need to fight to get this quarantine off our backs so we can start shipping."
Canker inspections have been shifted from groves to packinghouses.
David Munyan, deputy director at the USDA office in Fort Pierce, said so far this season there have been 190 canker finds statewide. Only 17 of those were in the 22 packinghouses in St. Lucie and Indian River counties.
California citrus industry officials have objected to the USDA rule change that allowed inspections to be moved to packinghouses, arguing that too many diseases would be able to threaten Golden State citrus.
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