florida citrus

Non-Valencia Oranges Cut to 35.0 Million Boxes

Daniel Cooper Citrus, Crop Forecast

Mark Hudson, USDA/NASS, Washington D.C. offered the February citrus crop forecast. The forecast of non-Valencia production is lowered 1.00 million boxes to 35.0 million boxes. Size and Drop components were final last month. The Row Count survey conducted January 26-27, 2017, showed 72 percent of the early-mid-season rows, and 83 percent of the Navel rows are harvested. Estimated utilization to …

Big Data Could Bring Big Benefits

Tacy Callies Citrus

By Taylor Hillman The flood of technologies hitting the market hasn’t slowed since developers turned their attention to precision agriculture. One thing that remains common among these technologies is the use of data, which has been previously ignored or unmonitored. Now, developers are focusing on algorithms and patterns in data sets that are collected during farming practices that will improve …

The Many Hats of Allen Morris

Tacy Callies Citrus, Economics

By Tacy Callies Having grown up in the small north Florida town of Macclenny, a farming community, Allen Morris was introduced to agriculture at an early age. His father died in a tractor accident when Morris was seven, but that didn’t deter him from wanting to earn a living in agriculture. In fact, at 14, he obtained a restricted driver’s …

Smelling Huanglongbing for Early-Detection

Josh McGill Citrus Greening

Another early-detection method being developed works by smelling huanglongbing infections in trees. This method detects the different scents plants give off. Researchers at the University of California, Davis have created a test that could lead to advances in fighting huanglongbing (HLB) disease in citrus. Researcher and professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, Christina Davis, said the test looks for a …

alico

Monitoring Plant Metabolism to Detect HLB

Kayla Mercer Citrus, Citrus Greening

HLB pre-screening through analyzing plant metabolism holds potential to be a relatively inexpensive option for growers. Caroline Slupsky, professor in the Department of Nutrition and Food Science and the Department of Technology at the University of California, Davis, is looking at the metabolism of citrus trees and analyzing changes as indicators of stress and disease. Plants’ metabolic pathways change in …

florida citrus

ACP Movement Shows History Repeating Itself

Kelsey Fry Citrus, Legislative

Research is looking at what we can learn from the Asian citrus psyllid’s (ACP) history, specifically ACP movement throughout Southern California. Psyllid finds in Central California are mimicking the insect’s history of spread. University of California, Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources held it’s California Asian Citrus Psyllid and Huanglongbing Research and Extension Summit at UC Riverside. The summit was …

HLB and ‘Tolerance’ as a Practical Matter in Choosing Rootstocks

Tacy Callies Rootstocks

By Bill Castle (Editor’s note: Click on the graphs throughout the article to enlarge them.) By classic biological definition, a particular citrus rootstock-scion combination when infected with Candidatus Liberibacter asiaticus (CLas) would be considered tolerant if infected trees had no more than slight reductions in performance, sometimes accompanied by a reduced level of the pathogen. That definition implies that the …

mandarins

UF/IFAS Scientists Zeroing in on Better Mandarins

Daniel Cooper Citrus

In their quest to develop higher quality mandarins, University of Florida/Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS) researchers are zeroing in on the traits that will help them breed the best fruit. Last year, they released the mandarin cultivar currently known as ‘7-6-27,’ which UF/IFAS researchers say is soaring with interest, and with more than 100,000 trees already ordered. Sponsored …

The Latest Buzz on Honeybees

Kelsey Fry Citrus

There’s a renewed buzz in honeybee research when it comes to problems within the hive. AgNet Media’s Sabrina Hill talks with a bee care program leader and a bee researcher.  Hear the full report here: The Buzz on Honeybees New research shows more threats to honeybees. There is a lot of talk in the general public about pesticides and bees. …

Discussing Genetic Engineering With a Concerned Public

Josh McGill Citrus

By: Kevin Folta Our farm producers have brought unprecedented low-priced, safe food to the United States and the world. Despite the success, there are challenges to sustained production that may best be solved with genetic engineering. These technologies have proven safe and effective for almost two decades, mostly in the arena of high-acreage agronomic crops like corn, soy and cotton. …

EPA Releases Preliminary Risk Assessment

expoadmin Citrus

EPA Releases Preliminary Risk Assessment for Insecticides Potentially Harmful to Bees From the Environmental Protection Agency: WASHINGTON– The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced a preliminary pollinator risk assessment for the neonicotinoid insecticide, imidacloprid, which shows a threat to somepollinators. EPA’s assessment, prepared in collaboration with California’s Department of Pesticide Regulation, indicates that imidacloprid potentially poses risk to hives when …