Why Your Orange Juice Might Be From Brazil: Floridas Trees Are Dying
Florida is synonymous with oranges. They’re on the state license plate. At the product’s heyday in 1977, the state boasted 53 orange juice processing plants. Today, beset by bacteria, hurricanes and international competition, there are seven.
A disease called “citrus greening” is pushing Florida’s orange juice industry toward the brink of collapse. Greening starts at the leaves and works its way through the tree like a hardening of the arteries, blocking nutrients and water. Oranges drop off branches unripe and unusable. This year’s crop will likely be the smallest since the 1940s.
So miserable is the condition of Florida’s orange industry that farmers are banking on inventing a genetically engineered orange that will be ready for sale—at the earliest—in 2022. The secret grove—1.5 acres of knee-high trees created with a spinach gene scientists hope can defend against the disease—is down an unmarked road and behind locked gates. Visitors are logged; the company requested photographs taken by a reporter offer no clues to the grove’s location.
Greening—which also hurts grapefruit, limes, lemons and other citrus—has cut Florida’s output in half over the past decade, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Revenue and jobs in the citrus sector are each down by about a third in the past three years. The state’s industry notched revenue of $9 billion in 2016.
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The disease’s carrier is the Asian citrus psyllid, a non-native insect so tiny it can be mistaken for a speck of pollen. It travels from grove to grove with little more than a light breeze and is undeterred by pesticides that can’t eradicate it entirely. It spreads the Candidatus Liberibacter asiaticus bacteria as it sucks sap from the plants. Some growers blame trees shipped to the U.S. from Asia for bringing in the bug. A series of hurricanes in 2004 helped spread the disease throughout Florida.
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The technology, developed by Texas A&M University, inserts a gene that is a part of the immune system of spinach into the genetic structure of an orange. The modified cells grown in a lab eventually shoot out roots and are planted in soil and develop into trees. The project is among Florida’s most promising efforts for a cure, even though the trees are still five years away from producing fruit.
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Within the industry and among consumers, there are questions about the use of genetically modified foods, which are widely found in grain crops such as corn and soybeans but are less common in fruit. With consumers moving away from the products, there is a risk that food companies won’t be willing to buy genetically modified juice, no matter how successful the science.
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https://www.wsj.com/articles/floridas-orange-industry-symbol-of-a-state-is-dying-1506437044
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