ST. PAUL, Minn. (Jan. 28, 2010)-Huanglongbing (HLB), or citrus greening disease, a major threat to citrus crops native to Asia nearly a century ago, has rapidly globalized in recent years, devastating citrus crops in North and South America, Europe, Africa, and other areas of the world.
Responding to this alarming threat to the citrus industry, the international research community invited colleagues, regulatory agency representatives, and commercial industry leaders to exchange the latest information, knowledge, ideas, and concepts related to citrus greening. A comprehensive 420-page proceedings of this meeting, called the International Research Conference on Huanglongbing, held in Orlando, FL, in December 2008, has been published for online public viewing on the Plant Management Network (PMN) website.
"The theme of this International Research Conference on Huanglongbing was Reaching Beyond Boundaries,” said Tim Gottwald, Ph.D., a research leader and plant pathologist at the USDA Agricultural Research Service and cochair of the Conference Organizing Committee. “It indicates the combined determination of the group and need to reach beyond political, scientific, and national boundaries in an attempt to find commercially feasible solutions to this devastating disease.”
The proceedings of this conference, which attracted 427 participants from 27 countries, contained nearly 150 papers from 14 sessions, all freely accessible online. The papers feature reports, case studies, research findings, summaries, and perspectives on many aspects of the disease from researchers, industry, and regulatory agencies. Session titles include Detection and Diagnosis; Epidemiology; Economics, Fruit Quality, Crop Loss; HLB Management Strategies; and International Citrus Industries: Coping with HLB.
The proceedings also include keynote lectures from noted international experts with nearly 100 years of combined expertise with HLB, key take-home messages, a survey of research priorities from participants, agendas, and more. This entire collection of information can be found at www.plantmanagementnetwork.org/hlb, where viewers can access papers individually or download the entire proceedings as a single .pdf file.
“Huanglongbing is the most devastating and feared disease of citrus,” said Gottwald. “This disease and its vector, the Asian citrus psyllid, are unfortunate examples of unintentional but devastating introductions that threaten the continued existence of commerical and residential citrus. The introduction of pathogens and pests like these to new geographical areas has increased in direct relationship to the increase in human movement over the last few thousand years. Without new technologies resulting in improved disease control, many citrus industries worldwide stand a chance of becoming nonviable due to HLB. These proceedings represent a dedication by the international research community to rapidly generate, validate, and disseminate such new technologies before it is too late.”
About the Plant Management Network
Plant Management Network (www.plantmanagementnetwork.org), is a nonprofit publisher of applied plant science resources. Plant Management Network is jointly managed by the American Phytopathological Society, Crop Science Society of America, and American Society of Agronomy. The Plant Management Network’s nonprofit publishing mission is to enhance the health, management, and production of agricultural and horticultural crops. PMN offers four applied journals, field trial publications, webcasts, industry news, proceedings, targeted search engines, and more accessed by more than 330,000 researchers and professionals in 2009 alone. Media Contact: Phil Bogdan Phone: +1.651.994.3859 OR Contact us here
