Word: cankerous
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...orange melons. The heaping displays at salad bars in supermarkets and restaurants across the nation are as appealing to the eye as they are tempting to the palate. For many people, building a salad to order is a bountiful, healthful new ritual. But for some there is a hidden canker. To keep fruits and vegetables tantalizingly fresh, produce has often been sprayed or dipped in sulfite solutions that prevent wilting and discoloration. Sulfites were long considered safe, but in recent years their skyrocketing use has brought disturbing reports. At least twelve deaths have been linked to sulfites since...
...year ago, citrus canker was found in young orange trees at a nursery in Avon Park, Fla. Ever since, state and federal agricultural officials have fought a widening battle to eradicate the deadly bacterial disease, last seen in Florida half a century ago. The canker now threatening the state's $1.2 billion citrus industry is resistant to every remedy except fire. But even after spending $24 million and burning nearly 9 million trees, officials are finding the canker in new locations. In the past month alone it has turned up in three nurseries and an orange grove...
Last week Florida took a still more drastic step to halt the epidemic: it quarantined the state's 300 commercial citrus nurseries. Said Charles Poucher, director of the state's canker project: "It causes an extreme hardship on nurserymen, but it had to be done because we can't live with citrus canker...
Though the disease is harmless to humans, it spreads easily, carried on clothing and equipment, even on windblown rain. To prevent the canker from spreading beyond its borders, Florida has also forbidden growers to ship fruit to other citrusproducing states...
...same. The freeze was the worst in history for the state's orange and grapefruit industry. Temperatures that dropped to the low teens destroyed as much as 40% of this year's crop. Coming on top of a $1 billion freeze in late 1983 and the citrus-canker epidemic in 1984, the icy blast destroyed the last hopes of some farmers in north-central Florida that they could survive in the business. Crops are smaller for as long as ten years after a freeze because farmers must drastically prune back the damaged trees or replace them with saplings...