Sneak Peek: January 2024 Citrus Industry

Tacy Callies Sneak Peek

January

The January issue of Citrus Industry magazine rings in the new year with positive news!

Find out how one Florida grower is producing up to 500 boxes per acre. Matt Machata tells how he rehabilitated his family’s groves in Lake Wales. He shares the details of his dry fertilizer and foliar application schedules. Attention to nutrition, irrigation and soil health have been the cornerstones of his success.

The results of AgNet Media’s Florida Citrus State of the Industry Survey paint a positive picture despite industry challenges. Learn what growers think about the season’s initial crop forecast, how many boxes per acre they produced last season as well as their current thoughts on trunk injection and plant growth regulators.

A report from a team of U.S. Department of Agriculture and University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences researchers offers more good news. The scientists explain how they are speeding up the process of finding effective HLB treatments. Their grove-first approach skips the traditional laboratory phase of research. The scientists are testing more than 80 different molecules by injecting them into trees in the field. Eighteen molecules are already showing equal to or greater effectiveness in reducing HLB disease when compared to oxytetracycline. Many more molecules are in the pipeline for grove-testing.  

New to Citrus Industry magazine in 2024 is the Citrus Nursery Source column, which previously ran in Florida Grower magazine. Written by Peter Chaires, executive director of the New Varieties Development and Management Corp., this popular monthly column covers issues of interest to nurseries and the growers they serve. The January Citrus Nursery Source includes an update on citrus rootstock seed availability and previews some upcoming variety display events.

Look for these articles and more in the January issue of Citrus Industry. To subscribe to the magazine, click here.