Word: cankering
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Racing to save the citrus industry from a deadly canker...
...wiped out 10 million trees statewide. This spring the notorious Medfly appeared in Dade County and began devouring fruit. Now, with the wholesale price of orange juice already 27% higher than last year, the worst yet has come. Last week scientists confirmed that a deadly new strain of citrus canker, a bacterial disease that is harmless to humans but defoliates and kills trees, has swept from Ward's Nursery, a citrus farm near Avon Park, to at least four other nurseries, one as far away as Naples, 125 miles from the source...
...disaster threatens to paralyze the $1.2 billion Florida citrus business. Says Stephen Poe, a plant pathologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture: "Of every disease that affects the citrus industry, canker is the most destructive." In a swift, ruthless effort to halt the epidemic, the state began emergency burning. It is the only reliable means of eradicating the disease. Ward's and the other four nurseries are being entirely torched; so are any seedlings recently purchased from those nurseries, along with any surrounding trees. By year's end many millions of plants will have been incinerated, leaving dozens...
Often compared with the foot-and-mouth disease that kills cattle, canker spreads quickly and easily. It clings to clothing, skin, tools and equipment and is buoyed for short distances by wind-blown rain. Florida's last bout of canker, in 1913, took more than 20 years and $6 million (the equivalent of more than $60 million today) to eradicate. Poorer regions such as Mexico and Asia, however, which cannot afford to burn groves, are frequently plagued by canker. And with an active source of infection in the world, it was only a matter of time before the blight...
...state. Indeed, the unflinching character of Owner Franklyn Ward was one reason the trouble was reported so promptly. Last month Nursery Manager Charles Collins noticed brown spots surrounded by yellow rings on one seedling's leaves and then on others. State pathologists quickly identified the blemishes as canker. Where the disease came from, however, remains a mystery...