Since 2018, there have been no huanglongbing finds in commercial citrus groves in North Florida, and there have still been no disease detections in Georgia groves, according to Citrus Industry.
In North Florida, HLB was detected in groves in Live Oak in Suwanee County and Perry in Taylor County in 2018, reported Xavier Martini, a University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS) researcher. “Each time we found a HLB tree in a citrus grove in these locations, our growers have been very proactive in removing infected trees,” Martini stated. He added that the disease has been found mostly in residential areas in North Florida, primarily along the Gulf of Mexico coast and along I-75.
Martini reported that the Live Oak and Perry locations were the only ones in commercial groves where the HLB-spreading Asian citrus psyllids have been found in North Florida. “In the Panhandle, so far psyllids are only found in residential areas,” he stated.
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