Announcement for Commercial and Residential Citrus Growers
The County of San Diego Department of Agriculture, Weights and Measures (AWM) wants to inform you of a new detection of the citrus disease Huanglongbing (HLB) in one residential tree in the Murrieta area of Riverside County. The new quarantine area will expand south through De Luz, combining the northern San Diego quarantine area with Orange, Riverside, Los Angeles, and San Bernadino counties. Detailed boundaries and maps of the new quarantine can be viewed on CDFA’s website.
The California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) declared a quarantine expansion on September 11, 2026. The area under quarantine is comprised of over 70 businesses that may be affected by the expansion, including over 40 growers and 10 commercial nurseries.
Residents with citrus fruit and HLB host plants are asked not to remove fruit from their property. Commercial citrus growers will need to obtain HLB Quarantine Compliance Agreements to continue to ship, process, harvest and/or sell their crops. AWM staff are here to assist you with these new requirements.
I wonder what percent is just plain ignorance. I don’t know about down there, but up in the bay the issue is simply not advertised to a general population.
The only times I’ve run into anything on the topic are
When I bought citrus from a garden center that has the appropriate tags. But these are so inconspicuous, you could easily miss them. They look just like all the random inventory tags nurseries throw on plants that you may never read
When I went looking for information after finding out about it in 1. And honestly if you don’t already know what to look for the state resources are not super digestible to a lay person.
So if you don’t know there’s a problem (which I suspect is common), it seems to me like you could easily buy infected plants without malicious intent
As someone who only recently got into fruit trees, I can absolutely see how this is possible. You just want a lemon or orange, haven’t done any research, find one on Etsy or eBay and have no idea. I don’t think ignorance is a good excuse, and I don’t live in a restricted state to know what the states do or don’t do to educate the masses.
It isn’t always just sellers. Hobbyists and homegrowers also trade without knowing the risks, sharing plant material to/from restricted states. I’ve been asked via DMs in different forums, over the years by folks in restricted states to sell/trade cuttings from my potted collection of some harder to find material, even though I am in NJ I always try to educate in a polite manner. These accounts are usually new and the people are definitely uneducated on the subject. Though living in those states I imagine it’s hard to avoid some sort of news about the citrus industry?? Also some people may think if they aren’t “technically selling it” it must not be illegal lol
The insect which carries HLB has made its way as far south as northern Argentina. There is also a small citrus industry in Uruguay, which has been mostly contained by aggressive controls. Not sure why it’s not highlighted on the map but there is definitely HLB there as well!
As a life-long California resident, I have been pretty able to avoid news. I mean, I might have I heard about it once or twice yearsss ago but in a news story that did not explain the restrictions and understood it to be a commercial issue
And that’s going back and forcing myself to remember. I was functionally unaware until I went looking for information.
And to be explicit, I’m not saying that this isn’t a big deal. It is, just that I’m certain there are ignorant importers and to blanket them as nefarious actors is unfair and ignores the fact that the state is not advertising this to consumers
The infected plant material in question came from unlicensed sellers. Further, internet plant sellers are well-informed by their hosting sites that agricultural permits are required.
The presence is owed to plant imports, not ACP migration. Also, notice that Buenos Aires and Los Angeles are equidistant from the equator.
So you’ve been avoiding the news and yet you claim that there has been no news. In reality, the State and the Feds have engaged in massive public outreach.
Then you have no excuse in regard to the knowing the existence of HLB.
Massive is not necessarily effective. Maybe the outreach is targeted at the supply side, if so I couldn’t speak to it. The only outreach I’ve seen is at licensed retailers, which is preaching to the choir. Out in the general world, I don’t recall seeing anything. Maybe I have, but it wasn’t effective enough to stick in my mind.
The same is true for the news. I don’t seek out horticultural news and if you think the general population will have active recall of things they saw once or twice in as many decades, I think we’re just going to disagree absent empirical evidence
I’m with @crater about the info though. I lived in CA when the first case was confirmed there. But it completely slipped my mind until I saw this thread. I’m sure that buyers could unknowingly cause a problem.
People running nurseries should know better though. And I’m sure there are people who are actually just unethical. But I think the average Joe buying a tree for his yard is more likely to be ignorant.
Don’t kid yourself, there are long time members on this forum who actively swap scion wood with members in other states, provinces and countries knowing full well it is illegal. They either do it via the mail, or smuggle it across borders in person. They are fully aware that what they are doing is illegal, they simply don’t care.
Most forum members are careful not to brag about it on the open forum, but others simply refer to what they are doing in a roundabout way, (but it’s pretty clear how they obtained varieties not available in their home state, province or country). Many know full well it’s illegal, they are just oblivious to the fact that their actions could destroy an entire agricultural sector.
True, now that you mention it, many fig varieties came here exactly as you described, smuggled across borders in suitcases from the Mediterranean and other areas. People have always moved plant material in one form or another.
In NJ and much of the East Coast we are dealing with spotted lanternfly, which if I remember correctly came into PA as egg masses on imported decorative rocks? Like we don’t have enough rocks here, someone had to import some lol.
Science will have to evolve faster than HLB spreads. There are already a few citrus varieties showing greater resistance or tolerance to HLB, meaning they can still become infected but suffer less severe disease and maintain better growth and production. Still that is different from immunity. Commercial citrus growers are eventually going to have to adapt and plant more of these varieties, or replace entire groves.
We can also argue that some of the problems these diseases in commercial agriculture are made worse by monocropping. When you have huge areas planted with the same crop, and often very similar genetics, once a disease gets established it has a pretty easy path to spread.
I’m not even saying there are no bad actors, just trying to provide a rationale for why, absent empirical evidence, I don’t buy that every single residential buyer is a bad actor
There is an additional insect not yet present in the Americas which can also spread HLB. It is the “African Citrus Psyllid” (Trioza erytreae). It seems adapted to regions further north and further south than the “Asian Citrus Psyllid” (Diaphorina citri) already present here. That second insect has already reached Portugal and Spain in the north and the southern edge of South Africa in the south. I won’t be surprised when it shows up on our side of the pond from some traded scions among hobbyists…
