The California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) released the 2018 annual report from the Citrus Pest & Disease Prevention Program (CPDPP).
According to the report, California citrus is a $3.3 billion industry, providing 21,600 jobs and covering 268,500 acres.
HLB (huanglongbing, also known as citrus greening disease) is the leading threat in citrus today. In 2018, HLB was found in more than 600 residential citrus trees in Southern California. The CPDPP is intensely monitoring commercial operations, but to date, HLB has not been found in a California commercial grove.
The report explains that the Citrus Pest & Disease Prevention Committee created a strategic plan for combating HLB now and in the future. The plan identified five prioritized strategies to achieve CPDPP’s goals of keeping HLB out of commercial groves, limiting Asian citrus psyllid movement in the state and fine-tuning the program. In addition, the program plans to align its annual budget in support of the strategies.
In 2018, the program found 676 infected trees while surveying 129,118 residential properties. The total number of citrus plant samples tested for HLB was 89,155. The report is available at https://citrusinsider.org/annual-report-2018/.
The CPDPP is a program primarily funded by California growers and administered by the CDFA. State and federal governments provide supplementary funds to support the program’s activities. It provides information and guidance to combat serious pests and diseases that could threaten California’s citrus industry. This includes detection and removal of HLB-infected trees, tracking and suppressing psyllid populations, enforcing regulations and quarantines in partnership with county agricultural officials, implementing biocontrol techniques to limit the spread of psyllids, data sharing and analysis among various stakeholders, and an information outreach program to growers, elected officials and homeowners.