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New high-tech methods to spot citrus greening

Central Valley Business Times – August 8, 2011

The devastating disease called citrus greening, which kills citrus trees and for which there is no cure, can now be identified faster and cheaper with a method developed by scientists with the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service.

The scientists are using a technology known as “Fourier transform infrared-attenuated total reflection” (FTIR-ATR) spectroscopy to rapidly identify with 95 percent accuracy citrus plant leaves infected with citrus greening.

Scientists from the Agricultural Research Service Subtropical Plant Pathology Research Unit in Fort Pierce, Fla., and the agency’s Quality and Safety Assessment Research Unit in Athens, Ga., collaborated on the use of FTIR-ATR spectroscopy to identify citrus greening in plants.

“Research leader Tim Gottwald and I had an idea to use spectroscopic methods to identify citrus greening before symptoms develop in the field, and our colleagues in Georgia were able to use their expertise to help us attack this problem,” says ARS researcher Gavin Poole in the Fort Pierce unit.

“We used a leaf removed from the citrus tree, dried it out in a microwave, and ground it into a powder — a simple protocol developed by Windham,” says research leader Kurt Lawrence in Athens.

The standard testing analysis costs about $6 to $8 per sample and takes several days. The new technique is done in seconds.

“This is a great method because the sample preparation is faster and easier,” says Mr. Hawkins.

Citrus plants are highly susceptible to citrus greening, also known as Huanglongbing or HLB. The disease was discovered in Florida in 2005 and is rapidly spreading in the citrus-growing regions of the state. Fruit from infected trees drops prematurely or fails to ripen. To date, HLB has not been detected in trapped Asian citrus psyllids or trees in California.

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