ACP-HLB experts

Bethke is screening additional organic insecticides on a greenhouse colony of ACP to find products that may have greater persistence and efficacy against ACP.

Frank Byrne
associate research entomologist, (951) 827-7078, frank.byrne@ucr.edu
Joe Morse
professor in the Department of Entomology at UC Riverside, (951) 827-5814, joseph.morse@ucr.edu

Efficacy of the systemic pesticide imidacloprid to protect citrus trees in production nurseries.

Dandekar and his colleagues will use gene fusion, which fuses two immunosuppressive genes that attack HLB in different ways, to make plants more effective at fighting the disease.

Daugherty studies the plant management practices used in retail nurseries and garden centers, such as irrigation frequency, soil type, and pot size.

Davis is refining a mobile chemical sensor that can detect diseased citrus trees by sniffing their volatile organic compounds.

Grafton-Cardwell is evaluating the effect of oil sprays for organic treatment of San Joaquin Valley navel oranges on citrus health, productivity, and fruit quality. She also educates community members about ACP.

Hoddle collected two natural enemies of Asian citrus psyllid in Pakistan. The first is a tiny wasp, Tamarixia radiata, which lays eggs underneath late-stage nymphs. The hatching larvae eat the nymphs, killing them. The other, Diaphorencyrtus aligarhensis, lays eggs in younger psyllid nymphs. Tamarixia is being released in urban areas of southern California to help reduce Asian citrus psyllid populations.

Jetter is developing economic models to estimate the costs of ACP and HLB management in backyard citrus and commercial orchards.

Jin is working to identify the HLB-induced small RNAs that will indicate whether a citrus tree is infected with the disease long before the plant expresses symptoms.

Kahn is producing a palm-sized flipbook to give California Department of Food and Agriculture inspectors ready access to photographs and identifying features of 25 plants that host ACP and may carry HLB. 

Kahn and Karp are developing a legal source of plant material for popular noncitrus psyllid hosts, such as bael tree, a native food plant of India also used for traditional medicine, and Indian curry leaf, a flavoring common in the cuisine of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and other Southeast Asian countries. They will provide clients with disease-free plants, reducing the incentive for smuggling plants and plant material into California that potentially harbor Asian citrus psyllid or huanglongbing disease.

Ma believes that the proteins secreted by the bacterium that is associated with HLB are moved rapidly throughout the tree in the phloem, the food-conducting tissue of the plant. Ma and her research associates developed a simple and fast method to sample the phloem.

Ray is testing olfactory neurons in the antennae of ACP to screen hundreds of chemicals as possible attractants and/or repellents.

Roose and his colleagues are assisting in the genetic analysis of about 200 hybrid crosses between sweet orange and trifoliate orange, a species used as a rootstock, to find natural plant resistance to HLB.

Carolyn Slupsky
UC Davis assistant professor in the Department of Nutrition and Department of Food Science and Technology, (530) 219-5757, cslupsky@ucdavis.edu.

Slupsky is studying the metabolism of citrus trees infected with the pathogen that causes HLB.

Richard Stouthamer
professor in the Department of Entomology at UC Riverside, (951) 827-2422, richard.stouthamer@ucr.edu.

Stouthamer is developing optimal methods for mass-rearing ACP parasitoids, determining the relationship between the numbers of parasitoids released and the rates of establishment, and the impact of parasitoids on ACP populations.