Prevention and vigilance are key. The advice from the University of Florida is to routinely treat your citrus with an insecticide approved for killing Asian psyllids. If you consume the fruit of the tree, select an insecticide suitable for your tree's stage of development: either fruit-bearing, or not producing. Home growers now can use the systemic insecticide, imidacloprid at a strength of 0.235%. Commercial products applied to the soil, like Bayer Advanced Fruit, Citrus, and Vegetable Insect Control can be purchased at gardening centers. Commercial growers have more options, and more regulations.
Remember that you still need to regularly inspect your tree for signs of disease. Insecticides may not control the numbers of psyllids adequately enough to ensure your tree is not infected. See the photos of citrus greening symptoms to help you identify suspicious symptoms. But citrus greening is difficult to definitively diagnose just by observation because it can resemble either a nutrient deficiency or another disease, citrus canker. There is a treatment for nutrient deficiency and for citrus canker. At this time, however, citrus greening's only outcome is slow death of the tree - and in the meantime the tree could potentially endanger other trees by serving as a host for new generations of psyllids that will spread and infect other citrus. HLB doesn't just affect orange trees. No citrus variety is immune.
If you see potential symptoms of the disease, contact Southern Gardens Diagnostic Lab at (863) 902-2249, or Florida Division of Plant Industry (800) 282-5153, or the UF Plant Diagnostic Center (352) 392-1795. These services have the means to make a positive determination. If your tree tests positive, it should be destroyed using approved methods. This will reduce the risk that other citrus will be visited by the psyllid and possibly infect them. There is nothing to be gained by keeping an infected tree. It will never produce fruit, and will certainly die.
To slow the spread of the disease to other states, Florida law prohibits the shipment of Florida grown citrus fruit or trees outside of the state. Next time you visit your local UPS or post office, you might notice the signs. Now you know why. To contain the disease spread, there are also strict controls on the citrus propagation and grafting industries. If you buy a citrus, get it from a reputable licensed nursery.
We can expect to pay more for citrus products in future years. We can hope that a treatment option or a cure for the disease is found. Right now the only strategy for protecting citrus is to reduce the psyllid population that transmits the infection. And unless we work together to keep the psyllid population down and isolate diseased plant products, the Weather Channel's video predicting no more orange (or citrus) juice for breakfast might be more accurate than we'd like.
Here are some resources to help you understand the disease better:
- Huanglongbing (HLB)/Citrus Greening Disease: Information
- Citrus Greening (HLG) at SolutionsforYourLife.com
- HuanglongBing Citrus Greening and Symptoms
- 2014 Florida Citrus Pest Management Guide: Asian Citrus Psyllid and Citrus Leaf Miner
- Citrus Greening Photos
- Florida Department of Agriculture Pest Alert
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