Word: citrus
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...dousing portions of it with more than two feet of rain. And while the Sunshine State dealt with the havoc caused by the steady, heavy rains that almost certainly touched each of its 67 counties, the bad weather increased the woes of Florida's precarious and crucial $9 billion citrus industry...
...most significant and widespread inundation of Florida since five hurricanes smacked the state in 2004-05. Aside from knocking fruits off trees, the combination of wind and rain exacerbated citrus canker, a disease that infects leaves and causes fruit to drop prematurely. Fay is likely to have increased the spread of the disease. Canker has destroyed more than 16 million trees in Florida. Despite $600 million in federal and state money spent to eradicate it from 1996-2006, the United States Department of Agriculture deemed eradication impossible after Hurricane Wilma blew through in October...
...week after Fay hit Florida, thousands of acres of citrus groves, particularly in the grapefruit belt on the east-central coast, remain under water. Orange groves in South Florida also endured flooding, though to a lesser extent. Damaged, soggy roots increase the potential for premature fruit drops. But the extent of the harm caused by the rains has yet to be fully assessed; damp conditions have limited surveys of the damage. But Florida's grapefruit season is barely a month away and there is fear that there will not be enough ripe fruit to reach the market. Early guesstimates provided...
...more than three decades in the citrus business, Doug Bournique has never seen such a downpour over Florida's Treasure Coast and Space Coast regions. It's been impossible to pump the stormwater out quickly because adjacent bodies of water are also above normal level. "We're in unchartered territory. I've never seen it this wet," says Bournique, executive director of the Indian River Citrus League, which includes 900 grower-members from Palm Beach County north to the Daytona Beach area. "It really was a one-in-100-year rainfall event for this region...
Beyond the sogginess and damp, however, is a more dangerous threat: greening, a condition caused by the Asian Citrus psyllid, a sap-sucking insect invader from overseas whose depredations began three years ago. Unlike canker, greening spreads from tree to tree without the aid of heavy winds or rain. Greening, also called huanglongbing or yellow dragon disease, creates misshapen and bitter fruit and eventually renders the infected trees useless for commercial cultivation. As soon as the insects appeared, greening was detected in all 32 citrus-producing counties in Florida, as well as in Louisiana and Texas...