Word: warded
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Martha Z. Ward Appleton...
...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...
...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 of farmers near bankruptcy and in despair...
That the latest outbreak began in Ward's Nursery seems especially tragic: the 60-acre seedling company is one of the oldest and most reputable in the 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...
...Ward's staff member had been farther than Louisiana in 18 months. Even more baffling, the Florida Xanthomonas campestris bacterium is somewhat different from its common cousins: equipped with a vast arsenal of immunities and extra fatty acids, which give it strength, it is a particularly virulent strain...