According to a study from the University of Florida's Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences released earlier this year, since 2006, the bacterial disease known as citrus greening has reduced orange juice production, costing Florida’s economy an estimated $3.63 billion in lost revenues and 6,611 jobs.
Greening causes citrus trees to prematurely drop fruit and eventually kills the trees. The disease is caused by a bacterium, and is transmitted by an invasive insect — the Asian citrus psyllid.
This afternoon, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack announced that $9 million would be made available to the Citrus Research and Development Foundation in Lake Alfred for research on stopping and preventing the transmission of citrus greening.
"That money will be used for research to look at ways of which we can block insects from going from diseased trees to healthy trees," Vilsack told Florida Sen. Bill Nelson and reporters on a conference call Monday afternoon. "And to institute new biological control systems which we hope will interfere and ultimately interrupt the citrus greening epidemic that has struck the state."
This article appears in Sep 27 – Oct 3, 2012.