Photo by Joe McQueen, UF/IFAS
Fruit harvested at the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS) Millennium Block from 2022 to 2026 will help determine the effectiveness of potential solutions to HLB. This season’s fruit will be harvested through early February, and research results are expected later this year.
The Millennium Block was planted in 2019 at the UF/IFAS Indian River Research and Education Center (IRREC). It is now a 5,000-tree research project with trees that were bred to be tolerant to HLB, said Flavia Zambon, assistant professor of citrus production at UF/IFAS IRREC.
“Citrus greening is a fundamental threat to the Florida citrus industry, and we’re eager to see the results of this long-awaited research trial to see what options we can suggest for farmers for greening-tolerant citrus varieties,” Zambon said.
The Millennium Block includes various citrus varieties in four research trials, one including 18 grapefruits and three commercial rootstocks. The other three trials feature 32 rootstocks grafted with Ray Ruby grapefruit, Glenn Navel sweet orange and UF-950 mandarin.
During the current harvest, citrus will be pulled and juiced to be tested for physical marketable qualities like size, and juice quality attributes such as sugar concentration and acidity. Those qualities affect the price that growers can expect to receive for their fruit.
“There are all these attributes that need to be in balance for both growers and consumers,” Zambon said.
Researchers also will evaluate the amount of market-quality citrus grown, both by the amount of fruit and by the total weight.
Researchers use drones to evaluate the health of the Millennium Block’s trees to see if there is a correlation between canopy size and the amount of fruit produced.
Maintenance for the Millennium Block is funded in part by the John T. Moose IRREC Enhancement Endowment.
Source: UF/IFAS
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