this post was submitted on 02 Jun 2024
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That works to mitigate flying insects but you are always going to have some. With citrus greening all you need is one to go from infected tree to uninfected tree and the tree is now fatally infected.
Worse the tree will live for years and the insects spread the bacteria for miles from one infected tree. Florida has spent almost two decades fighting the disease. And lost badly.
Hell even is we had done ruthless culling of any citrus within a large range of and infected tree like we did with citrus canker in the 90s it probably wouldn't have worked.
We failed to stop canker from spreading and canker only hurt production and made the fruit ugly and suitable only for juice. It was also much easier to manage as it was spread by leaf to leaf contact and via things like stepping on the leaves in one grove and not cleaning your boots before entering another grove.
In 2004 Florida produced 240 million boxes of citrus. Greening was discovered in Miami in 2005. In 2023 Florida produced 16 million boxes.