Haven’t seen this here yet but every once in a while I browse ars website. I guess they changed to tellus usda ars now. Also an interesting article about new trellis system for blackberries some might find interesting too
Here is article
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thats incredible news.
I knew they used dogs to search for drugs and explosives. But that that can even detect plant viruses is incredible. Now lets train some of those dogs for the EU and eradicate it everywhere.
I am curious though how they eradicated it from people with a backyard plum tree for example. Or are there still plenty of infected tree’s. Just not those in commercial production?
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I’m not sure how they come up with that at all. Was still browsing and came across trained dogs to detect hlb in citrus. So I’m hopeful they can really curtail citrus greening disease too.
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They’ve started surveying neighborhoods here.
@Richard so they go into backyards too? Or do you have to ask them to come out? Either way I really hope they can curtail this disease.
@fullplate
As of two years ago, the trained German shepherds can detect an HLB infected citrus from at least 100 feet away in reasonable wind conditions. They walk them in the groves down alleys about that far apart. The dog will get excited when it detects something and signal the handler when it decides which row to go down.
When a detection was verified a day or so later, they also patrolled areas upwind and downwind from the site.
There are also monitored insect traps around the southern CA counties. When an HLB positive ACP is found they begin patrolling those areas, including neighborhoods. At least two recent infected trees were found by trained dogs patrolling a neighborhood with a handler. When that happens, the search perimeter widens.
In three incidences in the past 4 years the neighborhood trees were obtained by the owner from an illegal online seller. To stop those sellers, a federal law is needed to require all sites to verify that sellers at their site are properly licensed. This would include venues such as farmers markets, brick & mortar stores with internal 3rd party vendors, and internet sites. This would give APHIS a powerful tool to shut down illegal vendors on many sites by simply getting cease & desist order for the site in general. Such a law is already in place for commercial pesticides.
Thanks Richard. Always interested in these kind of things and didn’t know doge were able to detect 100 ft away or not licensed vendors. I think that might be hard to do like if I wanted to give my mom a tree I could graft from my tree and give. But I agree something needs to be done as I doubt we’ve heard the last disease coming into USA.
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You can do that without a license provided you are not transporting it into an area where it is forbidden. If you are unsure just call the county or state Ag department.
The laws pertain to sales. It is aggravating when people profit from a black market business selling plants but don’t abide by laws intended to prevent infestation. “Oh my plants aren’t sick!” Really? There’s no harmful larvae in the soil, no scale anywhere, no unseen bacteria, fungi, mites, or virus?