Thou Shalt Nurture Soil as Womb
Mani Skaria, PhD
Founder & CEO @ US Citrus, LLC | Bringing a New Outlook to the American Citrus Industry Professor Emeritus of Citrus Pathology, Texas A&M University-Kingsville
The Microbiome. Any citrus grower aspiring to be profitable must redefine and start to respect the soil because it is not just an inert medium to grow a plant. We should acknowledge soil just like we value a mother’s womb, the uterus that nourishes the developing baby. Begin to appreciate soil as a Living Medium with a well-balanced team of bacteria, protozoa, and fungi – soil is a symbiotic ecosystem. In other words, the soil under your citrus tree is a community of microorganisms in a particular environment – a microbiome. There could be good guys and bad buys, which the grower balances.
In the citrus business and especially with the juice orange industry in Florida, the greening disease (aka HLB) is associated with the decline of an iconic Florida orange juice industry. No other crop in the world is affected by a single pest/disease to the level we see in Florida citrus. I began to believe there is more to the disease pressure beyond the regular pest-disease interaction and the science. Other factors could be:
(i) Uncontrollable natural forces in operation (Act of God)
(ii) Statutory limitations (Act of Government)
(iii) People-related (Human acts)
The roles of the item (i) and (ii) above are well-documented and publicly available. Item (iii) is a sensitive issue; it is beyond my role as a communicator via this medium. However, I like to draw your attention to a publication of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). A Review of the Citrus Greening Research and Development Efforts Supported by the Citrus Research and Development Foundation: Fighting a Ravaging Disease (2018). This is a 289-page official document; a PDF is available at http://nap.nationalacademies.org/25026. ISBN 978-0-309-47214-2 | DOI 10.17226/25026
The NAS review found that HLB research over a decade in Florida expanded knowledge of every aspect of HLB, yet there have yet to be any breakthroughs in HLB management.
Citrus growers in Florida need immediate action to sustain – meaning, they need short-term solutions first, followed by long-term solutions. The citrus industry in the entire USA needs good soil health management, efficient use of microbiome, and long term-term solutions.
The Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (FDACS) on Oct. 28 granted a 24(c) special local need registration for the injection of oxytetracycline (OTC) hydrochloride, an antibiotic (see picture).
According to NAS, longer-term HLB solutions come from improving citrus variety, new gene editing products, and focused work on plants, bacteria, and vectors.
Plant Stress. After the COVID-19 pandemic, we are reminded daily about the importance of stress management for our physical and mental well-being. A citrus plant would perform well even under HLB presence if the stress on the plant is reduced. Adequate soil moisture, nutrition, pH, and salinity levels are required.
Gene editing is a tool when correctly used can make advancements to improve the quality of life, including in medicine and food and fiber production. Certain tools of molecular biology when applied on select bacteria with an adaptive immune system would be a powerhouse to bring revolutionary changes in medicine and agriculture. One of the tools for safe gene editing is known as the CRISPR technology. CRISPR stands for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats. Madam, Malayalam (my native Indian language) and Nurses Run are palindromes. CRISPR technology is low cost but efficient; therefore, it is widely used.
There is reason to be optimistic about the future of the citrus industry in the USA.
E-mail: mani.skaria@uscitrus.com
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