Citrus Canker Management for 2017

Abstract

The citrus canker season is quickly approaching again, so it is time to start planning your canker management plan.  It is easy to forget the importance of controlling citrus canker with the current state of HLB in Florida.  However citrus canker can cause almost complete crop loss if environmental conditions are favorable for disease early in the season.  This crop loss is not just a fresh fruit problem.  If fruit are infected in the early stages of fruit expansion, the large lesions produced can induce midsummer fruit drop.  With properly timed and applied management, this midsummer canker fruit drop can be greatly reduced protecting your yields and, in the case of fresh fruit, fruit quality.  In this article, I will describe the conditions that lead to canker production, effective management tools, and the pitfalls that can lead to a control failure.