It shouldn’t be news to local citrus growers and industry people that the Asian citrus psyllid (ACP) is being found with increasing frequency in the southern San Joaquin Valley. If this is news to you please follow the website at http://www.cdfa.ca.gov/plant/acp/ and/or sign up for U.C. entomologist Dr. Beth Grafton-Cardwell’s blog at;
//ucanr.edu/blogs/ucanrorgblogscitruspest/.
Go to Beth’s website and in the upper right corner you can subscribe and receive the blog each time she sends one out. She also has a twitter account ‘ucanrbethgc’ that you can follow. This blog covers more than just ACP and is a great source of information on citrus IPM and citrus entomology. At the CDFA website, or through links to the site at Dr. Grafton-Cardwell’s blog, you can find maps delineating quarantine areas around new ACP finds, such as the one surrounding the recent find in the Wasco area (see attached map as an example). Regulations related to what needs to be done related to harvesting fruit and selling nursery trees growing within the quarantine zone can be found at:
http://www.cdfa.ca.gov/plant/pe/interiorexclusion/acp_quarantine_sjv.html
So far, there is no sign of HLB disease in the San Joaquin Valley, but that can change on short notice. Where ACP shows up, HLB disease (spread by a bacterium) is usually only a few years behind.
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