Curious. I haven't seen that in the trees down here in this part of broward. Granted, there aren't many planted out, but I know of one in Margate which was gifted to a friend of Walters well before LZ was released. It's been a productive and disease resistant tree for many years. PM is a minor issue here, and yes, this cultivar is highly sensitive to sulfur.
Internal breakdown on LZ is only an issue if not given enough calcium, and in this regard, it's middle of the pack compared to most other cultivars. Fortunately, lack of calcium is not a problem for most of Broward :-). OS sets fruit a lot better (dozens of bb's per panicle), but it's way more prone to jelly seed, and per my experience is MORE vigorous than even LZ.
Walter will cut just about anything down. He did cut down his orange essence tree several years ago (and numerous others as well :-). And the last I spoke with him, he was on the verge of axing the OS too :-). Memory is escaping me, but I vaguely recall him wanting to chop Fruit Punch as well. He's a bit of an oddball.
The biggest drawback to LZ (here at least) is lack of precocity and need for chill to flower. So, it does require some patience. I do think that dooryard trees are under far less disease pressure than those grown in an commercial orchard scenario.
I find it slightly odd that Gary has decided to abandon the LZ when he grafts and sells notoriously disease prone trees such as Julie and East Indian. But, alas, those foolish dooryard growers aren't typically concerned with reaping commercial-level crops; they look to flavor as a primary concern :-).
Most people attending or listening to these talks aren’t going to have enough space for 2 Trees of one variety on top of an existing collection of numerous others. The majority are going to plant a couple Mangos at best, many only one.
LZ’s major and fatal pitfall at this point is it’s extreme susceptibility to MBBS, but it’s hardly it’s only drawback. It’s highly prone to powdery mildew as well (and is coincidentally sensitive to sulfur, to whatever degree that matters in someone’s PM control program), has a very vigorous growth habit, and flowers poorly (particularly as a younger tree). It also tends to suffer from excessive abscission issues and the fruit’s flesh can be prone to internal breakdown. Outliers notwithstanding,These observations are based not only on my own experiences growing about 20 LZ trees, but also field notes from other growers in multiple regions.
Thus It’s probably a bad choice particularly for backyard growers with few trees AND commercial growers that can’t afford “black holes”. I suppose for people collecting numerous varieties, having one around may not matter much in the long run. But if you’re the typical backyarder and depending on it for your fruit year-after-year, it’s just not a wise choice in the era of MBBS, particularly with so many other excellent cultivars now available.
We lost almost all our LZ crop last year to disease, and that was with a spray routine that most regular people growing them wouldn’t come close to following . It’s bad enough that Gary Zill won’t even graft it anymore, and Walter cut his down. We may ultimately topwork our dozen or so remaining trees unless we can recover a sizable enough percentage of the crop to justify keeping them around.