Activity Update: Summer 2021

Work is currently underway on a broad overview of the current HLB/ACP situation in California, an update to the 2017 “State of the State”. We hope to publish this during the Fall of 2021.

An analysis of residential insecticide treatments around commercial groves in areas with high treatment refusal rates was completed in June 2021 and is awaiting review by the Citrus Pest and Disease Prevention Committee (CPDPC) Science & Technology Subcommittee.

A completed review of ACP trapping technologies was also presented to the both the CPDPC Operations (March 2021) and Science & Technology (June 2021) Subcommittees. The Science Subcommittee determined that some of the technologies included in the review warranted further investigation into the potential for their use in California.

Lastly, we have continued statistical analyses on data from a CRB-funded project with Dr. Subhas Hajeri and Lucita Kumagai regarding the probability of detecting CLas in different citrus tissue types. Improved reliability of HLB detection has the potential to increase the efficacy of California’s survey and testing activities, which could benefit the entire citrus industry. Benefiting the industry as a whole is always the benchmark by which DATOC evaluates whether to take on analytical requests from stakeholders outside the CPDPC.