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Huanglongbing solutions and the need for anti-conventional thought

Abstract

Citrus huanglongbing (HLB) has been recognized for a century yet control and management remain elusive despite over 90 years of intensive research. The bacterial pathogen is an insect endosymbiont that was most likely inadvertently introduced into citrus where it found a compatible environment for growth in citrus phloem cells and therefore jumped from the animal to plant kingdom. Because the genus citrus did not coevolve with the bacteria it has no resistance and little tolerance to it and the resulting vascular disease is severe. The winged insect vector of the bacteria, the Asian citrus psyllid (ACP), is an exotic introduced species in its own right, prolific, and difficult to control even on a regional spatial scale. The resulting disease has a long latent period prior to symptom expression and a challenging cryptic period during which detection by convention PCR and other methods can be elusive. The result is an unusually rapid increase and spread of the resulting disease. This article offers some nonconventional perspectives to examine this unusual and devastating pathosystem to stimulate though toward improved control/mitigation.

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