Citrus Industry

A tiny insect capable of carrying a disease that could devastate California's $1.2-billion citrus industry has been found in a lemon tree in San Diego, state agriculture officials said Friday. The identification of the bug as an Asian citrus psyllid in San Diego is preliminary, pending confirmation at a U.S. Department of Agriculture lab in Washington, officials said. The Asian citrus psyllid has become the primary carrier of citrus greening disease in Florida, where it has killed thousands of acres of orange groves, endangering that state's ranking as the largest U.S. producer of orange juice.

Area homeowners are responding to agricultural officials' call to action to help save the state's $2-billion citrus industry and their beloved backyard trees from a bacterium that the Citrus Research Board has referred to as "a death sentence for California citrus. " About 100 worried homeowners buzzed with questions during an information session last week in the San Gabriel Valley. State agricultural inspectors have enacted a quarantine in a five-mile radius around the neighborhood where Huanglongbing, or yellow dragon disease, was first confirmed March 30 in a citrus tree in Hacienda Heights.

The rotund, early ripening Hamlins and the yellowish, elongated Pineapples have all been picked. Soon it will be the Valencias' turn, and Mason G. Smoak plucks one of the smooth-skinned fruit from the tree and opens it with a serrated knife to see if it's ready. The orange, which gleams in the morning sun, is gorged with juice, and droplets explode into the air as Smoak cuts into the rind.

By the time he was 16 in 1936, Sam Perricone was picking and packing lemons in Corona and Riverside and then hauling them to Los Angeles in his small pickup truck to sell at the Grand Central Market. Perricone, who became a giant of the citrus industry, died of congestive heart failure July 8 at Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian in Newport Beach, said his daughter Lucy Perricone. He was 91. A resident of the Orange County community of Sunset Beach, Perricone owned or was a partner in approximately 25 businesses related to agriculture.

By the time he was 16 in 1936, Sam Perricone was picking and packing lemons in Corona and Riverside and then hauling them to Los Angeles in his small pickup truck to sell at the Grand Central Market. Perricone, who became a giant of the citrus industry, died of congestive heart failure July 8 at Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian in Newport Beach, said his daughter Lucy Perricone. He was 91. A resident of the Orange County community of Sunset Beach, Perricone owned or was a partner in approximately 25 businesses related to agriculture.

Florida orange growers and juice makers asked the federal government Monday to impose tariffs on Brazilian processors, accusing them of selling orange juice in the U.S. at unfair prices. The Florida growers and processors also asked the U.S. International Trade Commission and the Commerce Department to conduct an investigation into the pricing practices of four juice producers. The agencies are likely to make a decision in the coming months.

The discovery in Santa Ana of a tiny insect that typically carries a tree-killing disease has brought California's $1.6-billion citrus industry one step closer to an agricultural disaster, experts said. State agricultural officials said Tuesday that they recently trapped five adult Asian citrus psyllids on a lemon tree at a home in Santa Ana. They have sent the insects off to a lab to see whether they carry the bacteria that causes citrus greening, a disease that has ravaged groves in Florida and wiped out much of the citrus industries in China, India, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Brazil.

John V. Newman, a longtime Ventura County citrus grower and businessman who was the founding president of the Council of California Growers as well as a longtime chairman of Sunkist Growers Inc., has died. He was 91. Newman, who also served from 1973 to 1977 as chairman of the board of the Irvine Co., the giant Orange County-based development and investment firm, died of congestive heart failure Aug. 23 at his home in Westlake Village.

For more than 40 years, grapefruit grew juicy and ripe on this 1,200-acre grove inland from the Atlantic. Now there is little left but the jagged branches of torn-up trees, and spicy smoke fills the hot midday air as one by one, they are burned to powdery ash. "This just makes me sick," said John E. Quigley II, an environmental supervisor with the Florida Bureau of Pest Eradication and Control, who looked on as flames at least 15 feet high consumed yet another grapefruit tree.

Art Freeman knows his years are numbered as a citrus grower. Freeman owns and tends a 300-acre spread of lush green groves some 20 miles east of downtown Phoenix, far removed from the urban sprawl. But that may not be the case much longer. The development that has swallowed up so much of the surrounding desert is steadily advancing on the farm he established 30 years ago. "Farming is done here, but we have no place to go," he lamented. "We don't fit in anymore."

An insect known to carry a disease that has been devastating to Florida's citrus industry has been found in a bug trap in a citrus grove in Ventura County. The Asian citrus psyllid, which is the size of a fruit fly, feeds on the leaves of lemon and orange trees. It is also known to carry citrus greening disease, also called Huanglongbing or HLB, that ruins the taste of citrus fruit and juice and then kills the trees. The disease does not affect humans. This is the first time an Asian citrus psyllid has been found in Ventura County, a key producer of California citrus.

Ann Thompson still marvels at the sliver of ranchland she has lived on for the last eight years. "I fell in love with the house," she says of the Spanish Colonial-style home known as the DeWenter Mansion that sits in the quiet foothills of La Verne. "For my husband, it was the property. " Thompson is the most recent resident of an enduring landmark that recalls the heyday of the orange and lemon industry that brought millions of dollars to La Verne in the early 20th century. Many of the original citrus trees still surround the house at this onetime ranch.

California orange growers say they see ominous news in a report out of Mexico last week that agriculture officials discovered 51 trees infected with the feared citrus greening disease in the western Mexico coastal states of Nayarit and Jalisco. The discovery shows that the tree-killing disease is working its way toward California's $1.6-billion citrus industry. It has already ravaged the citrus industries in Florida, Brazil and other prime orange-growing regions and poses a major threat to California growers, according to agriculture officials.

When handed lemons, people are usually admonished to make lemonade. The city of Tustin made a park. Orange and lemon trees once carpeted Orange County the way subdivisions do today. In 1929, for instance, The Times reported Tustin's record annual crop down to the box: 340,928, to be exact. "With the orange season at its height and the lemon season drawing to a close, reports from the four packing houses in the Tustin district this week show that growers are receiving high returns," one story read.

A tiny insect that threatens California's $1.6-billion citrus industry has been found near one of the state's commercial citrus growing regions. The Asian citrus psyllid, which has ravaged orchards in Florida as well as overseas, was found in Valley Center in rural San Diego County, the closest the bug has come to a major concentration of citrus groves. Northern San Diego County has about 2,500 acres of commercial citrus trees and is home to the largest concentration of organic citrus farmers in the nation, which will complicate efforts to control the insect, said Ted Batkin, president of the Citrus Research Board.

An international coalition of citrus farming and agriculture officials are launching a cross-border plan to suppress the march of a tiny insect that threatens California's $1.6-billion citrus industry. The insect often carries a disease that kills citrus trees and has ravaged orchards both in Florida and overseas. Following a series of meetings in Monterrey, Mexico, this week, the coalition said today that the nations agreed to work together to develop strategies to hold down the population of the insect, impose quarantines on the movements of plants and conduct more tests to see how the disease is spreading.

Nothing has had more impact on the orange juice industry in Brazil than the Florida thermometer. When it registered freezing temperatures in 1962, it made juice processors look south for oranges. They found Sao Paulo. When it heralded another tree-killing freeze in 1977, it handed Brazil an estimated 50% of the U.S. juice market for the first time.

It's the stuff professional bug trappers dream of. As he peered at the first fly trap of the day, Ignacio Velazquez spotted his mottled foe, wriggling frantically under the magnifying lens. "I think I actually found one," said the 13-year veteran of the state's Department of Food and Agriculture, a hint of caution in his voice. "At this point, we'd call it a suspect." With 10,000 traps set statewide and about 200 trappers on the prowl, it was a needle-in-a-haystack discovery for Velazquez, an agriculture technician hunting for crop-destroying psyllids in the fruit-tree-lush neighborhood of Echo Park.