US: Fruit fungus changes Valley charities' citrus plans

Valley homeowners' excess citrus fruit, often picked by volunteer gleaners, can't be shipped across state lines this year after a fungal disease known as sweet orange scab was found in some citrus orchards in Arizona and other states. The disease, which causes lesions on the fruit rind, is not a threat to human health and doesn't affect the quality of the fruit, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said. But to prevent spreading the fungus, workers would have to do additional cleaning and disinfecting of the citrus before exporting. St. Mary's Food Bank Alliance spokesman Jerry Brown said in previous years, local food banks had volunteers glean the citrus, then the alliance traded it to food banks in other states for apples, potatoes and onions.

He said the additional cleaning and disinfecting would be prohibitively expensive for the group, so the alliance, in partnership with Sun Orchard, a micro juicery in Tempe, plans to make juice from the gleaned fruit. For Melanie and Harvey Noteboom of Surprise, this will be Year 13 as volunteer gleaners. Melanie, 69, a retired high-school teacher, and Harvey, 68, formerly in marketing, help coordinate efforts of volunteers from the Sun City Grand retirement community. They call themselves the Sun City Grand Pickers and Grinners. The 50 or so Sun City Grand volunteers who work every Wednesday morning during citrus-gleaning season January through March pick about 14,000 pounds of fruit each morning, for a total of 150,000 to 170,000 pounds for the season. Their harvest, combined with other groups' pickings for the St. Mary's Food Bank Alliance, totaled about 2 million pounds of citrus last year.

Source: azcentral.com