Florida's orange growers hope disease-resistant trees will revitalize the decimated industry

Flordia's orange growers are buying DNA-altered trees and inoculating their existing groves to ward off the devastating and incurable "citrus greening" disease that has ravaged the state's orange groves for the past 20 years. Julie Wernau reports for The Wall Street Journal that the EPA has approved both technologies this year, and growers have already ordered hundreds of thousands of resistant trees. 

"Citrus greening" causes oranges to drop from branches before they are ripe and turns them bitter. Florida's orange production has fallen by 95% since the disease was discovered. Wernau reports that 60,000 orange grove acres went out of production last year, which was 26% of Florida's remaining groves. Almost half a million acres are dormant now, while other groves have been transitioned into cattle ranches. 

Florida's state government created a two-year $330 million fund that will help growers buy inoculated and DNA-altered trees in an effort to revitalize the industry, Wernau reports. But, she writes, the new trees will take two years to start producing, and "the question is whether Florida's citrus industry can hang on that long."