Canker Found in PBC’s Callery-Judge Grove

Jul. 30–Canker came calling this week at one of Palm Beach County’s last two remaining citrus groves.

A single infected grapefruit tree was found at the northeast edge of Callery-Judge Grove near Loxahatchee and burned Friday.

“The good news is they found it before it gets spread again,” said Nat Roberts, general manager of Callery-Judge. “The terrible news is it is in our grove.”

Roberts estimated Friday that the grove, with under half a million trees, will lose anywhere from 15,000 to 20,000 trees. Florida law requires all citrus trees within 1,900 feet of an infected tree to be removed.

The infection in Callery-Judge was a blemish on an otherwise positive report from a spot check of commercial groves statewide that began June 29.

The new data released Friday show that of the 613 grove blocks surveyed — totaling 9,973 acres — only five blocks have been found to contain canker-infected trees, said Mike Hornyak, director of the canker eradication effort for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. About 100 USDA canker inspectors, originally assigned to residential areas, are now examining the groves as part of the sentinel effort.

Statewide, more than 6.1 million commercial and residential trees have been removed since the canker outbreak began in Miami-Dade County in 1995.

The infection at Callery-Judge is the first canker detected within a grove in Palm Beach County. Indian Trail Grove Ltd. in Loxahatchee had 7 acres of trees removed earlier this year after canker was found in a nearby residential property in The Acreage.

Palm Beach County’s first residential canker find was in 1999. Since then, more than 36,000 backyard trees have been destroyed in the county in an effort to wipe out the disease that causes cork-like lesions of stems, fruit and leaves.

“While we are not surprised at the find because of the movement of the hurricanes through Palm Beach County, we are pleased we have not found more,” said Mark Fagan, a spokesman for the state canker program.

Callery-Judge operations manager Mark DuBois said he and Roberts have been proactive in the canker eradication effort for years, even going to talk to people in Boca Raton who didn’t want their citrus trees taken.

“We have been fighting this all along,” DuBois said.

DuBois estimated that 20,000 trees would produce about 75,000 90-pound boxes of grapefruit, but said it’s difficult to say what the price would be per box.

“Grapefruit is our cash crop. We were looking at a decent return on the stuff we had,” DuBois said.

Callery-Judge, founded in 1962, produces more than 600,000 boxes of citrus in a normal year, including grapefruit, tangerines and oranges.

Plans call for the 4,000-acre Callery-Judge property to eventually be transformed into some type of development. Palm Beach County and the grove’s owners have been arguing for years over what density should be allowed on the land.

Roberts said the canker find was particularly devastating because it was one of a stand of 40-year-old trees that had survived the hurricanes and was on its way back to full fruit production.

“After 10 years of the grapefruit decline — the business cycle from hell — to have this happen here is just painful,” he said.

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