00:00Florida orange growers have been hit hard by hurricanes, pests, and disease over the past
00:06two decades, but new research could improve future citrus crops. Joining us is Dr. Drew Grosser,
00:12professor at the University of Florida Citrus Research and Education Center. What a spot.
00:19Thanks for being with us this morning. And Florida orange production has continued to drop.
00:24What has been the biggest challenges for citrus growers? Of course, we have this devastating
00:31disease now in Florida. It's been here since 2005. So virtually all the trees out in the field are
00:38infected and it's reduced our production to about 10% of what the normal level is. So this is a
00:46massive problem causing, you know, billions of dollars of losses. So our approach is through
00:53traditional breeding and genetics combined with biotechnology to develop citrus varieties that
01:00are more tolerant or resistant to this disease that can bring our production back up and also
01:06maintain the quality of orange juice and fresh citrus fruit that you find in the marketplace.
01:11What is citrus greening and how does it affect the fruit?
01:18Okay. So it's a very complex disease. It's kind of, it's kind of like malaria and mosquitoes. So it's
01:24a bacterial disease that lives in the vascular system of the tree. And it actually clogs up the,
01:31the bacteria can clog up the phloem, which is a part of the tissue that delivers the photosynthate
01:37that's producing the leaves that feeds the rest of the tree. So the tree is essentially starving to
01:42death. It's transmitted by a small, a very small insect that feeds, feeds on new growth. And it's
01:50very difficult to control the insect. So it spreads very rapidly. If you plant new trees in the field,
01:56after one year, about two thirds will be infected. And after two years, a hundred percent of the trees
02:00will be infected. And so all the trees that you see in Florida, driving down the road, none of them
02:06are growing on their own roots. They're all grafted to other citrus types that have stronger root
02:11systems that have better adaptation to various soils, water conditions, salinity. They, they control
02:19the size of the tree, the productivity of the tree and the fruit quality. So what this disease does to
02:24the fruit, it causes the, the sugar not to develop fully and you have more acid. And so the fruit is not
02:33sweet. It's sour. Also many of the fruit fall from the tree prior to harvest. So we have what we call
02:40a BRICS crisis. The BRICS is the amount of soluble sugar in the juice, and that's much lower in fruits
02:46that we're taking from trees with HLB. So the goal of our breeding program has been to screen thousands
02:54of new clones of oranges to find ones that are more tolerant to the disease. We're also screening root
03:02stalks that can help mitigate the disease in the top of the tree. And we're also developing new hybrids
03:09with mandarins and with oranges and different citrus varieties that produce very tasty juice that has
03:15very high bricks and very high color that can legally, legally be blended at 10% into our not from
03:22concentrate or frozen concentrate orange juice product. And so we're having success with all,
03:27all these things. And so now our goal is to help combine these newly selected oranges and hybrids
03:34onto the more powerful root stocks and grow them under conditions that we know allow the trees to do
03:42better once they get infected. And we think we can restore our production to normal levels by doing
03:49this, combining all these things together. I call it the three-legged stool. So you've got better
03:53fruit genetics, you've got better rootstock genetics, and then you're using an optimized nutrition
03:59program that we've been learning about as we go along. Yeah, incredibly in-depth. And just tell
04:05our viewers what the difference all of that is going to make for Florida growers.
04:10So there's going to be a bottleneck. You know, there's already lots of growers that have gone out of
04:15business. And part of the problem, too, is that the land has very high real estate value. So we're losing
04:23a lot of land that, you know, once the grove is torn up and the houses are built, we'll never get that back. So
04:28it's really a race against time. We've got to scale up production of these new trees that have the
04:36higher levels of tolerance and get them planted out. There's federal programs now that are assisting the
04:42growers and getting more trees out, and also state-level dollars going into helping get more
04:48trees planted out. So there's a race to get the new genetics out into the field and also using other
04:55emerging tools that can help mitigate the disease as the trees grow into production. And so we feel like
05:04we do have an opportunity. We feel like we have the tools in the pipeline right now that we can beat this
05:08disease. It's just a matter of really working together with the entire industry and getting
05:15getting the new combinations out out into the farmers hands and letting them grow the next new
05:20generation of oranges and other juice hybrids that will make the orange juice better quality.
05:26Dr. Jude Grosser, professor at the University of Florida Citrus Research and Education Center.
05:33Thanks for joining us here on AccuWeather Early. A lot of great information.
05:35My pleasure. Thank you. Thank you. You have a good weekend, sir.
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