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A grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Organic Agriculture Research and Extension Initiative (OREI) is intended to advance research to help organic citrus producers fight HLB disease. The grant awards $2.03 million to a team of scientists from the University of Florida, Texas A&M University and The Organic Center. The Organic Center is a non-profit organization convening evidence-based science on the health and environmental impacts of organic food and farming. The grant funds a four-year project.

Huanglongbing (HLB), also known as citrus greening, is the most serious disease of citrus. The disease is spread by the Asian citrus psyllid (Diaphorina citri) (ACP), which has been present in Florida since 1998. ACP transmits the bacteria to the tree when feeding on new shoots. There is no current cure for this disease and all commercial varieties of citrus are susceptible to HLB. 

“Citrus greening continues to devastate the citrus industry, and organic growers need to have organic solutions to fight this deadly disease without resorting to dangerous chemicals or genetic engineering,” said Amber Sciligo, director of science programs for The Organic Center. 

HLB is in Texas but its reach has been limited by very proactive grower programs and support. This research will be specific to organic growers who don’t use conventional chemicals for Asian citrus psyllid control but depend on preventative steps and biological controls. This research will protect two valuable resources, the Texas citrus industry and the organic citrus growers who supply consumers with a safe, organic fruit crop every year.

Peach leaf curl, also known as leaf curl, is a disease caused by the fungus Taphrina deformans. Peach leaf curl affects the blossoms, fruit, leaves, and shoots of peaches, ornamental flowering peaches, and nectarines, and is one of the most common disease problems for Texas Peaches. The distorted, reddened foliage that it causes is easily seen in spring. When severe, the disease can even reduce fruit production substantially. If you saw leaves that looked anything like the ones above, you may want to consider treatment.

Leaf symptoms appear about 2 weeks after leaves emerge from buds. The fungus grows between leaf cells and stimulates them to divide and grow larger than normal, causing swelling and distortion of the leaf. Red plant pigments accumulate in the distorted cells as you can see in the picture above.

Why am I writing about this disease now since we won’t see it till spring? Well, this disease has gone through the summer and is on the tree now as ascospores (sexual spores) and bud-conidia (asexual spores) on the tree’s surfaces, such as leaves, buds, bark, etc. As we get into the fall and much cooler temperatures or even a frost the leaves will begin to fall off. This leaf abscission (separation of the leaf from the tree) is actually a wound. When you have a wound, you have a place for these disease spores to enter the tree. Any dew, light rain or even wind can move spores to the wound.

Treatment

So, as the leaves begin falling off or after they have all fallen off, it is time to consider a treatment. Generally, a single early treatment when the tree is dormant is effective, although in areas of high rainfall or during a particularly wet winter, it might be advisable to apply a second spray late in the dormant season, preferably as flower buds begin to swell but before green leaf tips are first visible.

Historically, the most commonly and basically only fungicide for organic growers to use are the fixed copper products (see below for a list). For all copper-containing products, the active ingredient, copper, is listed as “metallic copper equivalent,” or MCE, on the label. Various product formulations differ widely in their metallic copper content. The higher the MCE, the greater the amount of copper and the more effective the product will be. However, other factors such as coverage, use of additives as such stickers and spreaders, and frequency and duration of rain, which can wash off the copper, also will impact product effectiveness. In all cases, the copper is active only when it is wet, when the copper ions are in solution. Thorough coverage is very important but without leaves not that hard. It is really good to get a calm day, lower pressure down, try to get a mist out of your spray tips and make sure the limbs are wet.

Active Ingredient	Trade Name	Company
copper hydroxide	Kocide-2000/3000 Champ ION or WG	Certis NuFarm
copper octanoate	Cueva	Certis
Copper oxychloride 23.82%   Copper Hydroxide 21.49%	Badge X2	Gowan
copper sulphate (pentahydrate)	Cuproxat Instill O Troya	NuFarm Sym Agro Oro Agri

As I first said, It’s time! It’s time for all you peach growers to get that sprayer back out, purchase your spray product, and SPRAY!

Does it pay to use a biological insecticide and apply a beneficial insect at the same time? Will they compete with each other, or will they actually help each other? I recently was sent a study published in 2021 by a USDA researcher who has done some great work with both biologicals and beneficial insects. Dr. David Shapiro-Ilan is with the USDA Fruit and Tree Laboratory in Byron, Georgia. He has done some good work on biological insect control in pecan orchards and so seeing his name on this study got my attention.

The title is: Combined Effect of Entomopathogens against Thrips tabaci: Laboratory, Greenhouse and Field Trials. In this study Dr. Shapiro-Ilan and other researchers looked at the use of two different biological insecticides, Beauveria bassiana (BoteGHA ES, SPE-120, MycoTrol, Botanigard, etc.) and Metarhizium anisopliae (Novozymes was producing Met 52 EC but hard to find now). These two biological insecticides are effective, to a degree, and used for many insect species.

The researchers also looked at two beneficial nematode species for control of thrips, Heterorhabditis bacteriophora and Steinernema feltiae. These two nematodes can infect the soil dwelling stage for thrips or pre-pupae and pupae stages.

Then the researchers also looked at the additive or synergistic effects of adding a biological insecticide and a beneficial nematode together. This is where it got interesting, singularly, none of the treatments alone did as well as they did working together – a biological combined with a beneficial. In fact, the effect was dramatic and statistically significant.

The best treatment was a combination of the biological Beauveria bassiana with the Heterorhabditis bacteriophora nematode. Almost as good was the biological Metarhizium anisopliae with the Steinernema feltiae nematode. The interesting thing was that the combination of Beauveria bassiana and Heterorhabditis bacteriophora nematode had a synergistic effect on each other. They worked well together, much better than the addition of each individual’s % control! The other combinations also worked well together but the effect was additive and not synergistic, meaning that the combination was the addition of the % control of one, added to the % control of the other. Also, the combinations can be tank mixed for field applications and result in much better thrips control than either biocontrol alone. As a reminder, always apply beneficials late in the evening as temperatures are moderating.

What is the downside? The cost biocontrol can be expensive! The research trial used upwards of 1 billion nematodes per acre which would cost about $500 per acre. Most beneficial companies recommend 50 million nematodes per acre which is around $70 per acre – this is somewhat affordable. The cost of the either biological insecticide is around $75 per acre, so that the cost of both together is somewhere close to $150 per acre for thrips control in onions. Is that going to work? Depends on the cost of the onions! What this research does show is that biocontrol works and works well. Affording it is up to you!

Here is another article that looks at the benefits of using biological insecticides and beneficial insects to control aphids on spinach from Vegetable Grower News – don’t tell them I copied it so I could let you read it!

Typically, there are a few concepts that people feel strongly reflect the organic buying habits of consumers. Most agree that: women buy more organic foods; people in higher economic classes buy more organic foods; and higher educated people buy more organic foods. This is the reason that you will find more organic food stores or stores that sell organic food items, located near highly affluent neighborhoods versus lower income neighborhoods.

These are accepted facts, but recently I was sent a 2022 research article published in Heliyon, which is an open-source journal available on Science Direct, that has challenged those facts. In this article, the authors look at the impacts of social class as well as lifestyle surrounding the consumption of organic foods in South Korea. They specifically are comparing income-level and education to a “lifestyle” for the decisions related to organic purchases and consumption. Lifestyle is defined as the relationship between the individual’s personality and the person’s living environment (not your education or wealth). Even though it is research in South Korea, they still closely align with what we would expect in the United States.

The premise or hypothesis for this research is that an individual’s lifestyle is likely to be associated with consumer behavior for organic food consumption and that those elements reflecting a person’s lifestyle can influence organic food consumption substantially or in research terms, be statistically significant.

For this research on lifestyle and how it influences purchases they looked at these variables – interests, opinions and activities. They utilized variables like this: an individual’s interest in organic foods, awareness of the health and environmental impacts of organic food consumption, and willingness to consume organic food at higher prices.

In layman’s terms, they found that experiences like attendance at food-related educational events; an interest in organic foods; an awareness of the impact of organic foods; and a willingness to purchase organic foods, all had a greater influence on the consumption of organic foods than did social status i.e., wealth and education. To put it simply, price may be the first reason given for not buying organic, but these other experiences can easily override price objections. We all know folks that bought something they thought was too expensive but still had reasons to want and buy it beyond price!

This is not really in-depth research as much as it is a look at some “research” findings and drawing some conclusions. They are of course open to interpretation, but for me, I think we in organic agriculture do need to educate the consumer more than has been done in the past. We also don’t need to ever say that low-income or even lower middle-income consumers are not going to purchase organic because of the price. With education, this research article would say, they are just as likely if not more likely to buy organic than the higher income-higher educated consumer!

The Transition to Organic Partnership Program (TOPP) is investing up to $100 million over five years in cooperative agreements with non-profit organizations who will partner with others to provide technical assistance and wrap-around support for transitioning and existing organic farmers. Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) is building partnership networks in six regions across the United States with trusted organizations serving direct farmer training, education, and outreach activities.

As you can see, Texas is in the West/Southwest region. The USDA partner organization for our region is CCOF out of California. I recently had a long conversation with the two organizers of TOPP from CCOF, Jessy Parr and Adrian Fischer to discuss organic farmers in Texas and interest in transitioning to organic. As you can see from the map Texas A&M AgriLife Extension will be a partner in this effort with CCOF.

The USDA partner organizations will do the following, but they will do this through their partners in each region.

• Connect transitioning farmers with mentors for at least one year after certification.
• Build paid mentoring networks to share practical insights and advice.
• Provide community building opportunities to include:
  • Train-the-mentor support
  • Technical assistance
  • Workshops and field days covering topics including organic production practices, certification, conservation planning, business development (including navigating the supply chain), regulations, and marketing
• Help producers overcome technical, cultural, and financial shifts during and following certification.
• Engage educational and training institutions (including crop advisors and extension agents) on organic workforce training and education and future human capital planning. 

Last Friday, September 30, I had an opportunity to speak at the Future of Urban Food Systems Summit held at the University of Houston Downtown campus. This was not my usual audience and really not my normal program topic, but it was really interesting, engaging and informative. What a wonderful group of people and many if not most, were young – much younger than me!

My topic was organic agriculture, but the title was Certified Organic: What is it and what is its value? I talked a lot about the Texas organic program including a lot of the information contained in the blogs you can read on this website. I think most of the audience were surprised at how easy it is to be certified and how many myths they had heard and believed about the organic program. The City of Houston has very few certified organic farmers and has the least organic handlers of all Texas major cities. Maybe they are about to turn that around!

On the program with me was Dr. Joe Novak, Faculty Lecturer at Rice University and before that of Texas A&M University. Joe is well known and well respected for his horticulture knowledge but more importantly for his use of gardening to improve human health. He did a fantastic job showing us all the important roles gardening and plants play in helping us all live and live better.

Also on the program was Dr. Patrick Stover, Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics and Director of the Institute for Advancing Health through Agriculture. I have known Dr. Stover for several years and his passion for using agriculture to solve health issues in humans is fascinating. I believe he had the audience on the edge of their seats!

The day included breakout sessions and lots of discussions. To say the least it is just a start to what will be coming over the next few months and years in Houston!