jackie burns
Jackie Burns, University of Florida/Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS) dean for research, discusses a new Florida Citrus Production Guide that will be available to growers soon. She summarizes a presentation she made at the June Florida Citrus Mutual conference for Michael Rogers, director of the UF/IFAS Citrus Research and Education Center in Lake Alfred.
“We’ve taken the Pest Management Guide and added to it,” Burns says. “We’ve added horticultural practices, a little bit about decay control, and enhanced some of the chapters on the (federal) Worker Protection Standard. We also have a new chapter on food safety.
“We can’t talk about Florida citrus without talking about HLB and living in the reality of the HLB world right now as we know it. So, as we know, production management has changed because of this disease. And so this new guide reflects those changes and the best science-based thinking that we have right now.”
Burns anticipates the guide will be available by the end of July. The guide will be free to growers. “You can get it from Extension agents,” Burns says. “Many of our Florida citrus faculty will have copies of it. Hopefully we’ll see a lot of these books earmarked and dog-eared in grower trucks and in their offices. We think it’s going to be very useful.”
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