Pest Control Advisers (PCAs) in California are some of the brightest and versatile in the nation. They each generally cover a wide spectrum of crops grown under a many different conditions and pest challenges. Watch this brief interview with Ruthann Anderson, President and CEO of the California Association of Pest Control Advisers, as she discusses the current State of the California Pest Control Adviser, as well as an opportunity for PCAs and their growers to get grant funding to tell their IPM stories. Learn more and apply at: https://capca.com/memberships/#study
Effective Nov. 22, 2023, the Citrus Pest and Disease Prevention Division (CPDPD) has officially updated the requirements for moving bulk citrus fruit within and from a Huanglongbing (HLB) quarantine area to a packer/processor.
If you are moving bulk citrus within a contiguous HLB quarantine zone, there is now no mitigation required.
If you are moving bulk citrus within a contiguous HLB quarantine area, but out of the original ACP regional quarantine zone (i.e., Orange County to Riverside County), one HLB mitigation is required.
If you are moving bulk citrus between two non-contiguous HLB quarantine zones (i.e., Riverside County to Ventura County), there is now one HLB mitigation required.
If you are moving bulk citrus outside of an HLB quarantine area, but within the same county (i.e., San Diego HLB quarantine zone to San Diego ACP regional quarantine zone), there is one HLB mitigation required.
If you are moving bulk citrus fruit to an area outside of the HLB quarantine zone and outside of the origin county (i.e., Ventura HLB quarantine Zone to Kern County), two HLB mitigations or a wet wash are required.All fruit, no matter of its origin or destination, must be completely safeguarded with a tarp or enclosed vehicle while in transit per requirements listed in the compliance agreement. The CPDPD will be signing revised compliance agreements with growers within an HLB quarantine, as well as packers/processors receiving fruit from a quarantined area.For complete information and details regarding the mitigations required for fruit movement, please visit the CPDPD’s Citrus Grower/Grove Manager Information page.For questions regarding citrus fruit movement requirements, please contact your local agricultural commissioner, email Keith Okasaki at Keith.Okasaki@cdfa.ca.gov or call 916-274-6300. — By the California Citrus Pest & Disease Prevention Program
The California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) has declared a quarantine in Ventura County following the detection of the citrus disease Huanglongbing (HLB), or citrus greening, in two citrus trees on one residential property in the city of Santa Paula. These detections are the first HLB-positive trees in Ventura County. CDFA is working with the United States Department of Agriculture and the Ventura County Agricultural Commissioner on this cooperative project.
CDFA crews will be working to remove and dispose of the infected trees and are conducting a mandatory survey of every property within 250 meters of the detection site. After the survey is complete, all host plants in the 250-meter area around the detection site will be treated to suppress the disease vector, the ACP. By taking these steps, a critical reservoir of the disease and its vectors will be removed, which is essential to protect the surrounding citrus from this deadly disease.
These detections establish a mandatory five-mile citrus HLB quarantine area around the find site. The quarantine area is bordered on the north by Ojai Road; on the south by E Los Angeles Avenue; on the west by Wells Road; and on the east by Balcom Canyon Road. The quarantine prohibits the sale of all host nursery stock and the movement of all host plants or plant parts within a five-mile radius of the finds. The quarantine applies to residents and commercial operations alike. These detections will also place parts of Ventura County into Bulk Citrus Regional Quarantine Zone 6, which will require any commercial citrus growers to apply an additional mitigation step(s) to move fruit within or from this zone. Production and retail nurseries within the five-mile quarantine are being contacted by CDFA and will be issued a hold notice preventing the sale of nursery stock host plants. Visit CDFA’s Map and Quarantines page for more details.
Growers in Ventura County should contact Grower Liaisons Sandra Zwaal at szwaal2@gmail.com or Cressida Silvers at cressidasb@gmail.com for additional information about these detections. In response to the HLB detections in Santa Paula, a grower meeting was held on Wednesday, Oct. 4. Stay tuned to Citrus Insider for details or reach out to the Grower Liaisons for more information.
An HLB quarantine area currently exists in parts of Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and San Diego counties, where more than 6,300 residential trees have tested positive for the disease and have been removed. — California Citrus Pest & Disease Prevention Program
Citrus Pest & Disease Prevention Program — A Candidatus Liberibacter asiaticus (CLas)-positive Asian citrus psyllid (ACP) sample has been collected from a residential property in Ventura County in the Santa Paula area and has been confirmed by the Citrus Research Board’s Jerry Dimitman Laboratory. The positive sample – comprised of 12 adult psyllids from a residential citrus tree in the Southwest area of Santa Paula – was collected on Sept. 6 as part of the Multi-Pest Risk Survey and confirmed positive for CLas on Sept. 19. This is the first confirmed CLas-positive ACP found in Ventura County.
A Huanglongbing (HLB) quarantine zone will not be established as a result of this CLas-positive ACP detection and California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) staff are swiftly conducting surveys and collecting samples from the property and all HLB host plants that are located within a 250-meter radius around the find, per the ACP/HLB Action Plan.
While the first confirmation of a CLas-positive ACP in Ventura County is concerning, as of today, HLB has not been detected in any Ventura County citrus trees. However, it is more crucial than ever that populations of the ACP continue to be controlled properly in order to stop the disease from spreading, as oftentimes a CLas-positive ACP precedes the detection of an HLB-positive tree. Additionally, there were no nymphs observed at the time of collection on Sept. 6., however, during resampling efforts this week, CDFA collected 15 nymphs from the find site property but on a different host plant. CDFA crews will be surveying for any additional adult or nymph psyllids as part of the 250-meter survey being conducted this week.
This CLas-positive ACP detection is not associated with the research that was conducted last year in Southern California – including Ventura County – as a part of a program funded by the HLB Multi Agency Coordination Group by researchers from UC Agriculture and Natural Resources, UC Davis, UC Riverside and the University of Arizona, Tucson. These studies’ laboratory tests vary from the federally approved testing methods and procedures required by CDFA labs that would allow the state to take any regulatory action. Therefore, this is the first CLas-positive ACP detection recognized by CDFA.
While treatment is not mandatory for area commercial growers as a result of the detection, Ventura County commercial growers who wish to take proactive steps to protecting their groves or who have additional questions can contact Ventura County Grower Liaisons Sandra Zwaal or Cressida Silvers.
USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) is issuing a Stakeholder Registry announcement extending the public comment on two pathway risk assessments and three potential regulatory policy options for Tomato brown rugose fruit virus (ToBRFV) in fresh tomato and pepper fruit for consumption and plant propagative material (including seeds). The public will have an extra 30 days to provide comments to the documents in response to requests to extend the comment period beyond August 30, 2023. APHIS will now consider all comments received by September 29, 2023.
To safeguard U.S. agriculture against the introduction of the virus into the United States, APHIS issued a Federal Order effective on November 22, 2019, to restrict the importation of tomato and pepper fruit and plant propagative material, such as plants intended for planting, plant parts and cuttings, and seeds. On June 3, 2020, APHIS amended the Federal Order to clarify the requirements for fruit, specifically requiring an additional declaration for tomatoes and/or pepper fruit from countries that already must provide a phytosanitary certificate for these commodities. All other requirements remained unchanged.
The distribution of ToBRFV is rapidly changing across the world and given numerous detections of the virus in the United States over the past several years, APHIS is reevaluating the Agency’s policies for regulating fresh tomato and pepper fruit for consumption and plant propagative material (including seeds) for ToBRFV.
APHIS developed pathway risk assessments to update and inform its policy decisions related to the virus. APHIS drafted the following documents: (1) a tomato and pepper fruit for consumption pathway risk assessment, (2) a propagative plant materials pathway risk assessment, and (3) a document that describes three potential regulatory responses considering the pathway risk assessments.
APHIS is seeking scientific information that would provide a greater understanding of the distribution of ToBRFV in the United States and of best management practices, including the development of resistant tomato varieties for this virus. APHIS is also seeking information about the economic impacts of the potential regulatory options.
APHIS is considering three regulatory policy options:
Continue to regulate Tomato brown rugose fruit virus as a quarantine pest but remove those import restrictions for tomato and pepper fruit for consumption. APHIS would continue to regulate propagative materials, including plants and seed, as described in the existing import Federal Order. APHIS would continue to take action on domestic detections of the virus in seeds and other propagative material.
Categorize Tomato brown rugose fruit virus as a non-quarantine pest and rescind the import Federal Order. This action would remove all import restrictions for this virus for fruit for consumption and for propagative materials. APHIS would no longer take action on domestic detections of the virus.
Continue to regulate Tomato brown rugose fruit virus as a quarantine pest and implement the requirements in the existing import Federal Order without change. APHIS would continue to take action on domestic detections of the virus in fruit, seeds and other propagative material for consumption.
Texas A&M AgriLife Research scientists and collaborators at Iowa State University have developed a sensor chip that can detect many disease pathogens with 10 times the sensitivity of currently available methods.
The chip also eliminates the need for chemical dye reagents typically used in the diagnostic process. The new technology shows promise for rapid, low-cost point-of-care diagnostic capabilities in plants, foods, animals and humans, including detecting foodborne pathogens, bird flu and COVID-19.
An abstract diagram showing the basic configuration of the LAMP reaction chamber and nanopore film sensor containing immobilized LAMP products (Texas A&M AgriLife Illustration)
Results from the new sensor are available in about 30 minutes.
In their research, published in ASC Sensors, scientists used the new sensor to detect Phytophthora infestans. The pathogen causes globally devastating late blight disease — a particular threat to potato and tomato crops.
The research was co-led by Jinping Zhao, Ph.D., AgriLife Research postdoctoral research scientist in Dallas, and Subin Mao, a Ph.D. candidate in electrical and computer engineering at Iowa State University. Serving as corresponding authors were collaborators Junqi Song, Ph.D., associate professor and plant immunity research lead with AgriLife Research in Dallas, and Long Que, Ph.D., professor of electrical engineering at Iowa State University. Seed grants from each university funded the research.
“This research advances technologies that have emerged as some of our greatest opportunities for improving agriculture, food safety and human health,” Song said. “Our publication represents a step toward realizing these powerful tools against diseases.”
Building on existing technologies
The new sensor improves upon a technique known as loop-mediated isothermal amplification, or LAMP, which is widely used to detect pathogens by amplifying their DNA.
Detection of LAMP products amplified from templates, such as pathogen DNA, often requires that the products be “labeled” by using fluorescence dyes — a costly process with low sensitivity. The new sensor diagnoses pathogens without such reagents and at high sensitivity. It also eliminates a lengthy DNA purification process that creates challenges for point-of-care use.
The new chip consists of a nanopore thin-film sensor inside a special reaction chamber. Primers are uniquely designed to be immobilized on the nanofilm, causing amplified LAMP products to become bound to the sensor, which produces signals that can be directly and easily measured with a portable spectrometer.
What’s next
The LAMP chip offers a new portable platform to detect pathogens using label-free sensors with ultrasensitivity. The research team will now work to further enhance sensitivity to a subattomolar or even lower level.
The team aims to offset current challenges to detecting and distinguishing pathogen species and strains with high-sequence similarities. They will also work to improve the specificity of detections and establish quantitative detection by integrating artificial intelligence and CRISPR gene-editing technologies.
Their goal is to achieve a viable product for broad adoption in plant, animal and human health point-of-care applications.
USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) is issuing a Stakeholder Registry announcement to solicit public comment on two pathway risk assessments and three potential regulatory policy options for Tomato brown rugose fruit virus (ToBRFV) in fresh tomato and pepper fruit for consumption and plant propagative material (including seeds).
To safeguard U.S. agriculture against the introduction of the virus into the United States, APHIS issued a Federal Order effective on November 22, 2019, to restrict the importation of tomato and pepper fruit and plant propagative material, such as plants intended for planting, plant parts and cuttings, and seeds. On June 3, 2020, APHIS amended the Federal Order to clarify the requirements for fruit, specifically requiring an additional declaration for tomatoes and/or pepper fruit from countries that already must provide a phytosanitary certificate for these commodities. All other requirements remained unchanged.
The distribution of ToBRFV is rapidly changing across the world and given numerous detections of the virus in the United States over the past several years, APHIS is reevaluating the Agency’s policies for regulating fresh tomato and pepper fruit for consumption and plant propagative material (including seeds) for ToBRFV.
APHIS developed pathway risk assessments to update and inform its policy decisions related to the virus. APHIS drafted the following documents: (1) a tomato and pepper fruit for consumption pathway risk assessment, (2) a propagative plant materials pathway risk assessment, and (3) a document that describes three potential regulatory responses considering the pathway risk assessments.
APHIS is seeking scientific information that would provide a greater understanding of the distribution of ToBRFV in the United States and of best management practices, including the development of resistant tomato varieties for this virus. APHIS is also seeking information about the economic impacts of the potential regulatory options.
APHIS is considering three regulatory policy options:
Continue to regulate Tomato brown rugose fruit virus as a quarantine pest but remove those import restrictions for tomato and pepper fruit for consumption. APHIS would continue to regulate propagative materials, including plants and seed, as described in the existing import Federal Order. APHIS would continue to take action on domestic detections of the virus in seeds and other propagative material.
Categorize Tomato brown rugose fruit virus as a non-quarantine pest and rescind the import Federal Order. This action would remove all import restrictions for this virus for fruit for consumption and for propagative materials. APHIS would no longer take action on domestic detections of the virus.
Continue to regulate Tomato brown rugose fruit virus as a quarantine pest and implement the requirements in the existing import Federal Order without change. APHIS would continue to take action on domestic detections of the virus in fruit, seeds and other propagative material for consumption.
APHIS will accept public feedback for 30 days following the publication of the documents on the Stakeholder Risk Assessment Consultation web page: https://www.aphis.usda.gov/plant-health/risk-assessment-consultation. APHIS will consider all comments received by August 30, 2023.
Grower-Shipper Association of Central California – Possibly due to colder winter and spring weather conditions as well as mitigation strategies taken by farmers, pest and disease pressure associated with the Thrips-Vectored Impatiens Necrotic Spot Virus (INSV) have lessened in leafy greens fields as compared to 2022. As observed and reported by the Grower Shipper Association’s (GSA) INSV Task Force, this reduced pressure in the early growing season has resulted in dramatically fewer infections and, so far, lower pest populations as we move into the spring leafy greens harvest.
What is INSV? Lettuce fields are infected by INSV via thrips migrating from infected host plants. Plants infected by INSV can have dark spotting and yellowing, which resembles the effects of sunburn on the leaves. Another plant disease, Pythium wilt (PW), often accompanies INSV infections and causes the plant to wilt or collapse making this truly a complicated pest/disease issue for farmers.
In 2022, INSV infections in the Salinas Valley resulted in yield reductions in many fields resulting in consumers experiencing limited product availability in some areas.
To identify and respond to INSV pressure as well as accelerate research mitigation strategies to control INSV, GSA launched its INSV Task Force in 2021. The Task Force is a collaborative effort between industry and the academic/research communities. In addition to funding provided directly by GSA, the organization helped to secure a one-million-dollar grant from the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) for INSV and soil-borne disease research priorities. And in April 2023, GSA helped obtain a supplemental $200,000 grant through CDFA to further critical efforts.
“One of our major initiatives was tracking thrips and corresponding disease pressure to identify infection trends that have helped guide research strategies,” explains Christopher Valadez, GSA President. “We found that an important mitigation strategy to lower pest pressure is weed abatement since weeds are good hosts for thrips. By encouraging increased weed control on farms as well as working with the state and county agricultural commissioners’ offices on abatement efforts along roadways, businesses, and open spaces, we’re reducing the opportunity for thrips to find spots to over-winter and lay eggs in spring.”
Valadez adds that in 2022, disease pressure was exacerbated by unseasonably warm weather stretches which caused prolonged stress on the plant making the lettuce more susceptible to disease impacts. “The unseasonably cold weather we’re experiencing this year is positively impacting early-season INSV infections,” he says.
In addition, GSA’s Task Force continues to assess varietal resistance, examine treatment efficacy trials and conduct grower education and outreach programs specific to these diseases.
“Our thanks to Mary Zischke who heads up GSA’s task force as well as the farm advisors, scientists, and industry members for their diligent work on this very complex issue,” Valadez says. “Their efforts are crucial to prevent significant impacts from INSV infections, which can affect many in our communities including farmers, farm workers, processors, and facility employees.
Imagine a devastating plant disease that sweeps the land, decimating crops. For Florida’s citrus growers, that apocalyptic vision is not a horror movie, but a reality: since it was first identified in the Sunshine State in 2005, citrus greening disease has reduced Florida’s citrus production by a whopping 70%, and threatened other major citrus producing states such as California and Texas. Without any treatment or cure available, desperate growers have cut down infected trees or abandoned their groves entirely. Scientists have been racing to come up with a solution. Now, one enterprising team believes it may have one, in the form of: stingrays.
Like other organisms, stingrays have an immune system. Unlike most organisms, however, the rays’ system produces an antibody with a functional domain that is both far smaller and more stable than most. These special antibodies, or nanobodies – termed “mantabodies” by the research team – are specialized proteins that can help other organisms fight off infection. Essentially, the researchers plan to treat the rays as a sort of all-purpose pharmacy, where they can introduce a novel pathogen like the citrus greening bacteria, and the rays will generate an immune response specific to that pathogen. The genetic material (gene) encoding this specifically-targeted antibody can then be placed in modified plant cells that grow as a symbiont – an organism that lives in a close, mutually beneficial relationship with the diseased organism.
Alternatively, researchers can culture the modified plant cells in large vessels and then harvest the antibodies that the cells produce for inoculation into citrus trees. The resulting antibody therapy would prevent or cure disease development in the trees. The approach could, in theory, be applied to other organisms too, and the researchers plan to use the technology to target pathogens that invade farmed fish, honey bees, and more.
This project was a 2022 winner of ARSX, an annual competition that asks ARS scientists to propose innovative, high-risk, high-reward ideas that cross disciplines and break boundaries to solve our most pressing challenges.
A southern stingray, Hypnum americanus, swims along the seabed. (Photo courtesy of Matt Ajemian, Ph.D., director of the Fisheries Ecology and Conservation Lab at FAU-HBOI)
The project team includes researchers from ARS, the Florida Atlantic University Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute, in Fort Pierce, FL, and the and U.S. Department of Energy Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Educationin Oak Ridge, TN. Team member and ARS research molecular biologist Michelle Heck is using USDA’s SCINet high performance computing clusters to analyze the stingray genomes, and she is applying a powerful artificial intelligence (AI) approach called AlphaFold to identify the mantabody genes.
“Using AlphaFold, which was just released two years ago, we can rapidly and accurately predict the shape of all the stingray proteins,” explained Heck, who works at ARS’s Robert W. Holley Center in Ithaca, NY, “And we can find the ones that look most like what we think a mantabody protein should look like.”
The researchers are also taking advantage of other advances in biotechnology, like the mRNA technique that was used to deliver Covid-19 vaccines. They believe that their project could, in turn, advance biotechnology even farther.
“You can modify almost anything with an antibody treatment,” said Joseph Krystel, a team member and research biologist at the ARS U.S. Horticultural Research Lab (USHRL) in Fort Pierce, FL. “You could stimulate the immune system of a citrus tree, or you could suppress a particular set of genes if you wanted to. The reason we don’t do it now is that it’s cost-prohibitive. But the mantabody platform could give us a more cost-effective way to do it.”
It could also provide farmers with more sustainable biological alternatives to many current practices. Robert Shatters, a team member and research molecular biologist at the USHRL, explained that, “Mantabodies could be applied to veterinary aspects of agriculture, and a number of plant pathogen issues. We think this project would have a really broad impact, and that’s why we’re excited about it.” – By Kathryn Markham, USDA-ARS Office of Communications
David W. Cudney, UC Cooperative Extension specialist emeritus, passed away in Riverside on March 30. He was 82.
Cudney joined UCCE in 1964 as a farm advisor for Imperial County. In 1978, he became a UCCE weed science specialist for Southern California, based at UC Riverside. While working as a specialist, he earned his Ph.D. from UC Riverside in 1989.
In 1992, Cudney and six Extension specialist colleagues from all over the western United States, published Weeds of the West, a guide book to identifying weeds in Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming. The 11th edition, containing more than 900 color photographs showing the early growth stages, mature plants and features for positive identification of each weed, was published in 2012.
Cudney, who was active in professional organizations, served as president of the California Weed Society in 1995. He retired in 2003.
“I met Dave as a grad student at UC Davis when I started my program working on a basic study of herbicide resistance,” said Jodie Holt, director of the UC Riverside Botanic Gardens and professor emerita. “Dave’s the one who cajoled me into presenting a poster at a Weed Day and becoming active in the weed science community. Throughout my career he was a great mentor who kept me and my students connected to on-the-ground weed science.”
Jodie Holt, left, and Dave Cudney inspect perennial ryegrass for bermudagrass invasion in the 1990s.
Holt also remembered Cudney’s kindness as a friend.
“On a personal note, when our son was interested in flight simulation software, for his 14th birthday, Dave surprised him by taking us all on a flight and letting Doug fly the plane,” she said. “He was a wonderfully positive, kind and generous friend and colleague!”
Cudney is survived by his wife, Loretta Cudney, and his children Michael Cudney of Riverside; Jana Cudney of Ontario; and Lisa Zaldivar and her husband, Anthony Zaldivar, and their children Alyssa and Christopher, all of San Dimas and Anthony Zaldivar of Palm Desert; his sister, Rita Suminski and her husband, Russell Suminski of Minden, Nevada. — By Pam Kan-Rice, UCANR
For complete information and details regarding the mitigations required for fruit movement, please visit the 
Grower-Shipper Association of Central California – Possibly due to colder winter and spring weather conditions as well as mitigation strategies taken by farmers, pest and disease pressure associated with the Thrips-Vectored Impatiens Necrotic Spot Virus (INSV) have lessened in leafy greens fields as compared to 2022. As observed and reported by the Grower Shipper Association’s (GSA) INSV Task Force, this reduced pressure in the early growing season has resulted in dramatically fewer infections and, so far, lower pest populations as we move into the spring leafy greens harvest.
