Citrus greening question

[seanyk]

What do growers spray on citrus to prevent greening? Or atleast slow it down. I always see a tag on nursery plants for sale. Apparently they need to be treated every couple of months. With what?

[pineislander]

They use Imidacloprid, by law all citrus sold has to be treated.
https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7p42d8b9

[achetadomestica]

There is another post about a breakthrough treatment for citrus greening.

http://tropicalfruitforum.com/index.php?topic=40066.0

The only previous treatmant I know of was placing the tree in a tent and increasing the
temperature. The Imidacloprid is for leaf minor and is not effective for greening.
Some people tried to plant Asain Guava near their citrus to attract the psyllid which
carries greening. Greening results in a tree producing about 1/3 of the usual crop
with 3-4x as much fertilizer. Most groves have been fertilizing year round and barely
being profitable with the reduced harvest. For door yard growers with a couple trees
you can expect your tree to produce 100-150 fruit per tree, not 350+ per tree like previously.
This is usually more then enough for a family. I have a Kishu tangerine and it has produced
300+ tangerines the past 3 years. More then enough for me to share.

[JoeP450]

Your tangerine sounds like a keeper, not sure exactly what killed off my key limequat, key lime, marsh white grape fruit, and tangelo 🙈.... but my Meyer lemon consistently produces every year and thrives, I juiced over 50lbs of lemons last season to freeze into flavoring cubes and made a few liters of limoncello from the peels. I think certain citrus may be more hardy though that’s my speculation, wondering if grafting onto a finger lime rootstock might be beneficial?

-Joe