Freeze Fails To Stop Citrus Pest
Tulare County Ag Commissioner Marilyn Kinoshita says the early December freeze does not seem to have slowed down the citrus pest Asian Citrus Psyllid around Tulare County.
“On December 23 we had 4 new ACP finds near the Richgrove area” south of Porterville,already in a CDFA quarantine zone.
“Then last Friday,January 3,there was a new find in a trap near the Odwalla Juice plant in Dinuba and a new find at another juice plant in Tipton run by Ventura Coastal and Sunkist.”
”It seems the pest traveled in on juice plant loads.“ Kinoshita says it may not mean the pest comes from fruit that was picked in Tulare County since”this time of year fruit comes in from the southern California deserts” and all over.
Kinoshita says she is not surprised the freeze had not knocked down the psyllid population.” Local citrus scientist “Beth Grafton-Cardwell told me the pest survived cold spells in Florida too.” The pest has carried greening disease in that state that has caused billions in damage. So far Tulare County has dodged the disease.
While the freeze did not knock out the pest population here, it did a number on the citrus crop. Kinoshita estimates that we lost “15 to 20% of the county’s orange crop.”
Meanwhile inspections of oranges at packing houses has sent 25,000 cartons of citrus to juice plants,meaning it was not suitable for the fresh market. ”We will definitely have a short year and packing houses will probably be out of fruit by March.”Yet to be determined is how the coming Valencia crop fared.