Fighting Back Against Citrus Greening

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As with most crops, nasty diseases take their toll in production. Wehave here a key problem with orange production and learn to whatextent it is possible to continuing the harvest of affected trees. Pretty well it turns out although production itself is curtailed. Atsome point the tree itself will still come out early.
This impacts the citrus trade and will be a problem for years tocome. The result will be an underlying taste of bitterness inprocessed orange juice. That may have to be neutralized if it canbe. If I recall correctly it has been done in other cases.
Perhaps there is an opportunity for resistant varieties and farmbased processing for a high quality product. We know the market willpay for top end quality that can be farm labeled.
Fighting BackAgainst Citrus Greening
by Dennis O'Brienfor USDA News
Fort Pierce FL(SPX) Feb 04, 2013
Oranges from treesinfected with Huanglongbing (citrus greening) can be used for orangejuice as long as they are mixed with other oranges, according to newARS research.
http://www.seeddaily.com/reports/Fighting_Back_Against_Citrus_Greening_999.html

U.S. Department ofAgriculture (USDA) scientists in Fort Pierce, Fla. are helping citrusgrowers and juice processors address the threat posed byHuanglongbing (HLB), a disease that is costing the citrus industrymillions of dollars each year.
Citrus trees infectedwith HLB, also called citrus greening, usually die within five to 10years. Fruit on infected trees often falls to the ground beforeharvest, and fruit that remains on trees may become misshapen andsometimes only partially ripen.
Supervisoryhorticulturalist Elizabeth Baldwin with USDA's Agricultural ResearchService (ARS) in Fort Pierce is investigating the effects of HLB onthe taste of orange juice produced from diseased trees. Her goal isto provide help while a permanent solution is found.
She and her colleaguesat the agency's U.S. Horticultural Research Laboratory evaluatedfruit with or without HLB symptoms-produced over two growingseasons-for a number of fruit and juice characteristics.
They comparedMidsweet, Hamlin, and Valencia oranges, the three principal varietiesharvested for processing, and used gas and liquid chromatography toanalyze juice compounds.
They found that orangejuice from the fruit with HLB symptoms was often higher in limoninand nomilin, compounds that can give the juice a bitter taste, butthat the compounds were generally below levels that could be detectedby human taste panels. Their results were published in the Journal ofAgricultural and Food Chemistry.
In another study, theyinvestigated how HLB infection affects juice quality in the samethree varieties of orange with respect to cultivar, maturity, andprocessing methods.
The results showedtremendous variability, depending on the harvest date and variety oforange. In general, the researchers found more of a problem withoff-flavored juice from diseased Hamlin orange trees than withdiseased trees of the Valencia and Midsweet varieties.
But the researchersconcluded that using some fruit that has HLB symptoms would not causeproblems in commercial operations as long as fruit with and withoutsymptoms, harvested from several varieties, locations, and seasons,was mixed together. Those results were published in the Journal ofFood Science.