Michael Rogers recently said there is increased optimism in the Florida citrus industry. “With that optimism, growers are starting to give more consideration to replanting,” said Rogers, director of the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS) Citrus Research and Education Center in Lake Alfred.
According to Rogers, some growers who held off on planting in the face of HLB now are more confident they can grow citrus. “We’re getting a lot of questions in IFAS from growers on what to plant now,” he said.
Fortunately, IFAS plant breeders have a number of new scion/rootstock options that growers can consider planting, Rogers said. “There’s actually a lot more options than ever when it comes to round orange scion/rootstock combinations to choose from,” he said.
However, all those options can lead to more confusion in trying to select the best combination, he added. So IFAS is making much information available online about the different scion/rootstock combinations, including field trial results from different areas of the state. Growers can visit https://citrusresearch.ifas.ufl.edu/ and click on “Plant Improvement” at the top of the page to see the field trial reports.
“We’re trying to do our best to make it simple, and it’s not a simple choice,” Rogers said.
Rogers’ discussion about planting options is part of the current episode of the All in for Citrus podcast. Listen to the full podcast here.
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