On Oct 5, Gail Fulbert, Paul Brink and I attended the Asian Citrus Psyllid presentation in Yuba City. We learned that the tiny little Asian Citrus Psyllid is the vector for the Huanglongbing (HLB) citrus disease that is helping destroy the Florida citrus industry. There is no cure for the bacterial disease and it is always fatal to citrus trees and closely related plants in the Rutaceae family.

The Asian Citrus Psyllid is in California, Huanglongbing is not … yet. Master Gardeners have been asked to educate our communities about how to prevent the spread of the insect and the disease. I’ve posted the presentation in the CE Documents folder of the Newsletters/Documents section in VMS.

An interesting approach recommended when teaching about Huanglongbing is to refer to it as HLB instead of Huanglongbing or Citrus Greening, as it’s also known. The reason? Greening sounds like a good thing, Huanglongbing sounds funny, but HLB sounds like HIV, which everyone knows is bad.

Please review the presentation which lists suggestions to share with our community about how to prevent the spread. And when you teach classes and work at information booths, take the time to explain why it’s important to all Californians to be aware of the source of imported plants. Taking a cutting from a friend’s backyard orange tree that’s newly infected with HLB and grafting it to a tree in your yard could be the catalyst that starts the epidemic.

Spread the word. We have flyers available to us in multiple languages. You can count the time you spend reviewing the presentation as Continuing Education hours.

Sue Mosbacher