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It's a disease that has potential of
wiping out the central California citrus industry.
This is the very last area
in the world that you can grow fresh citrus.
There is an insect that actually carries this bacterium.
The insect is called Asilidae,
but it's very much like a mosquito.
If they happen to carry this bacterium,
the bacterium that causes citrus greening disease,
then they will spit that bacterium into the plant,
and that is how the plant becomes infected,
making the fruit appear smaller,
the fruit appears green and it ends up having a metallic,
very bitter and sour taste to it.
No citrus is immune and
all trees regardless of what their origin is,
will eventually succumb to
this disease and they will die.
The impact of the disease
potentially in California could be worse and it
could happen faster because
the Florida orange industry is
mainly there to provide orange juice.
The industry was able to respond to the presence of
the disease by blending the juice to
some extent to get rid of
the flavor taint that is
caused by the presence of the bacterium.
But here in California, the industry is
almost entirely a fresh-market industry.
The impact of this disease on
a fresh fruit citrus industry is much more catastrophic.
If you like to put lemon on your fish or on your seafood,
or you like to use limes in your guacamole or
any type of food where you actually put
citrus juice in, that's going to be gone.
You're going to have to find other
ways to acidify the food,
and that's going to change flavor and it's going to
change everything on how we eat.
I think it's a huge problem and
I don't think a lot of people really recognize
how far reaching or even think
about how they consume citrus in their daily lives.
Not just picking up an orange and eating an orange,
but it's used in so many different foods.
There is not going to be any one magic silver bullet
that's going to completely eradicate the disease.
We need to have early detection
right now in order to stop the disease from spreading.
With our work, we're trying to be able
to detect this disease
very early on before
it's detectable using the DNA-based methods.
We've proven that once the bacterium comes into the tree,
the entire tree puts out a response and we
can detect that response using our technology.
This is what we're hoping to move
forward to help combat this disease,
essentially identifying trees and
then having those trees removed.
This will buy us some time.
Long-term, what we really need is
resistant citrus that can't be infected by the pathogen.
One way that we're trying to do that
is to identify resistance genes and
introduce them together or
simultaneously into one genetic background,
and so that we would then have sweet orange
that would have multiple genes for
resistance against the pathogen
that would be truly resistant in the field.
We have to figure out how to keep our trees and
our orchard safe and free of this long,
long being here in central
California as long as possible.
There are a few things
that we are doing that are giving us hope.
I'm fairly optimistic that we should be able to
address this and the scientists
and industry will rise to the challenge.
It would be better for us to nip this thing in
the bud while it's still in
its early stages and so that we can
preserve fresh citrus for generations to come.
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