Virtually all of Florida’s citrus groves have been infected with citrus greening disease, also known by its Chinese name Huanglongbing, since the early 2000s. Despite billions of US dollars put toward rescue efforts, citrus production numbers are the lowest they have been since the Great Depression. Scientists from Argentina are now testing the agroecological method of push-pull pest management using an organic plant-hormone solution to lure pests away from citrus crops and toward “trap crops” instead. Proponents hope push-pull management, first developed in East Africa, could be part of the solution and lessen dependence on pesticides.
Virtually all of Florida ’s citrus groves have been infected with citrus greening disease , also known by its Chinese name Huanglongbing , since the early 2000s.
FORT PIERCE, Florida — Just off of North Kings Highway, a dirt road once led to lush rows of sweet-smelling citrus crops: grapefruits, lemons and oranges. Now, all that’s left of the once-flourishing groves are barren rows of dead trees, weeds and a few sickly fruits still clutching to their final nutrients.). It was an ominous sign; the invasive pest transmits a pathogen that causes citrus greening disease, or Huanglongbing, which slowly kills the trees and turns the fruit bitter.
But Coll-Aráoz’s team is taking it a step further. They are spraying the citrus with an organic plant hormone that represses the plant’s production of a naturally produced chemical called, the compound that attracts psyllids and other pests. The hormone works by blocking the plant’s biosynthetic pathway that releases this chemical.
Citrus is most susceptible to the Asian citrus psyllid during a phase called “flushing,” when the plant grows new leaves at the tips of its branches. These new-growth clusters are where psyllids like to lay their eggs. Image by Marlowe Starling for Mongabay.In Fort Pierce, about 2 1/2 hours north of Miami on Florida’s east coast, Coll-Aráoz and her collaborators have designed an experiment to test this technique on young Valencia oranges .
“I was sort of astonished at how reluctant producers are to test something new, even if they know that everything else hasn’t worked,” Coll-Aráoz said. She said some growers worry that by planting trap crops, they will be attracting more psyllids to their groves. But the insects are already there — so much so that eradicating them isn’t possible.
Instead, he said he can envision push-pull being part of a wider management system to help reduce psyllid populations. “One of the things that we’ve learned over these past 15 years with citrus greening is that it’s very unlikely that there will be one tool or one approach that’s going to make a difference,” he added. “This really has to be an integrated approach.”
“Something really important is that we want to make this technology easily integrated” into farmers’ existing pest management strategies, Molinas said, who is a third-generation farmer from Ecuador.
Florida Citrus Greening Disease Huanglongbing Citrus Crops Push-Pull Pest Management Trap Crops Pesticides
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