For years, Florida orange farmers have been fighting an incurable bacterial infection that threatens the very existence of the state’s orange industry.
About half the trees in every citrus orchard are stricken with an incurable bacterial infection from China that goes by many names: huanglongbing, “yellow dragon disease” and “citrus greening.” Growers, agriculturalists and academics liken it to cancer. Roots become deformed. Fruits drop from limbs prematurely and rot. The trees slowly die.
Florida citrus, which provides up to 80 percent of U.S. orange juice, has been hardest hit, but the disease — which also has an African and Latin American strain — also has been detected in Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Arizona and California. It has spread to other parts of the world, including Mexico, India, sub-Saharan Africa and Brazil, which provide nearly 20 percent of the orange juice Americans drink. In each case, the impact to citrus has been devastating.
Researchers funded by the industry, the state and the U.S. Agriculture Department are exploring an option that could save the trees and their citrus, but also turn off consumers: engineering and planting genetically modified trees that are resistant to the bacteria carried by the psyllid.
Read the full, original article: Florida citrus growers worry that deadly bacteria will mean end of orange juice
