A recent donation of 100 acres could fuel the fight against an economy-crippling citrus disease.
Citrus grower Jim Hughes, who died earlier in August, gave land near Polk County to the UF Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences to promote research.
“He was a very inviting and generous man that was extremely interested in the health of the citrus industry,” said UF Citrus Research and Education Center director Jackie Burns.
The land represents a 50 percent increase of field research space for the college and will be used to test new methods of combating the citrus greening that is plaguing the Florida citrus industry, Burns said.
Yellowing leaves are a sign of citrus greening, a disease that eventually kills the plants it infects. Since 2006, the effect of citrus greening is estimated to be $4.54 billion in lost revenue and 8,257 lost jobs, according to UF/IFAS studies.
“We now have some of the highest orange juice prices we’ve ever had,” said Thomas Spreen, UF food and resource economics professor.
Although the added acreage will help with research, Spreen said the process of recovering the state citrus industry could take five to 10 years.
One short-term solution to save the existing tree inventory is thermal therapy, which treats trees already in the ground using a canopy of heat to kill the bacteria.
Burns said using innovative treatments like this will help speed up the citrus recovery.
The extra acreage will allow for more planting and a better evaluation of the progress of this long-term research.
As of now, it is unclear when there will be an end to the issues caused by citrus greening.
But Burns said preliminary evidence suggests that progress is being made as IFAS puts cooperative effort into finding a solution.
“We very much appreciate Mr. Hughes’ generosity,” she said. “It’s not every day IFAS gets bestowed acreage like this.”
A version of this story ran on page 3 on 8/28/2013 under the headline "UF gets 100-acre donation for research citrus greening epidemic"
