Geotechnology for Inspection, Management and Analysis of Propagation of Greening (HLB) in Citrus

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In fruit cultivation, Brazil occupies the third place among the world's major producers, especially with regard to fresh oranges, which accounted for the single largest growth in 2006 with more than 50,000 tons, an increase of 64% in volume and 85% in value compared to 2005 (AgroBrasil, 2006). The numbers reflect the dominance the country has maintained in the sector over the years, not only in the production of oranges and their byproducts, but also in the export of such products, especially frozen concentrated orange juice (FCOJ). Despite its importance, the main bottleneck for the support and development of the citrus industry refers to phytosanitary issues. Diseases such as greening have caused serious losses to the sector, and greening alone is responsible for the greatest losses in the industry today, according to data from Fundecitrus. Greening is the most feared disease among orange growers as there is no cure or treatment for it and it spreads at a very high speed. In this context, several national and international institutions have made an effort to build cooperation projects aiming to provide the production sector with an economically viable system for early diagnosis of Greening (HLB) that eliminates the subjectivity of visual inspections, decreases the failure rate in inspections, and allows for a more accurate diagnosis of the disease at least six months prior to the symptomatic phase. The present research project, Geotechnology for Inspection, Management and Analysis of the Propagation of Citrus Greening, aims to provide growers with tools for more efficient inspections, and monitoring of the dissemination of this and other citrus diseases in citrus-growing regions of São Paulo. Georeferencing and precision agriculture tools will be applied to help i) identify factors in the disease propagation and manifestation, such as weather conditions; proximity to roads, forests and rivers; transmission; and fluctuations in the population of possible vectors, ii) develop fast, accurate and early techniques to estimate the incidence of the disease in orchards and iii) the evaluation, modeling and spatial mapping of the disease.

Ecosystem: Mid-North

Status: Completed Start date: Wed Dec 01 00:00:00 GMT-03:00 2010 Conclusion date: Sat Nov 30 00:00:00 GMT-03:00 2013

Head Unit: Embrapa Instrumentation

Project leader: Ricardo Yassushi Inamasu

Contact: ricardo.inamasu@embrapa.br