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What killed the Florida orange?

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Re: What killed the Florida orange?

#151

Post by gertrunde »

leke wrote: post #141

I find these stories fascinating. Since it mentioned the orange originally came from China, I wonder if there are varieties that are resistant while still tasting good.

Wikipedia suggests that there are no naturally resistant strains, although there is some genetically modified work ongoing.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citrus_greening_disease#Contro...]

More interesting was a suggestion that a more holistic approach may have merit, i.e. improving overall soil/grove health with less intensive methods. [https://citrusindustry.net/2019/04/02/citrus-grower-sees-suc...]

Re: What killed the Florida orange?

#152

Post by fuzzfactor »

advisedwang wrote: post #82
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did this banana have seeds!? I've never seen one, but it looks awful. They were actually good?

No, it didn't have seeds either. Have you ever had "banana flavor" candy that doesn't really taste like bananas? The flavoring is Isoamyl acetate, and I've heard suggestion that people called it banana flavor because it tasted more like Gros Michel. After switching to Cavendish banana the flavor name no longer made as much sense. Not sure how true it is though.

Very true.

The bananas I had as a child back in 1960 had the strong flavor of isoamyl acetate along with the natural bouquet of related flavors in lesser amounts.

I hated it.

The space-age banana popsicles were even worse because they were nothing but isoamyl acetate.

Re: What killed the Florida orange?

#153

Post by imtringued »

BoneShard wrote: post #6

It was a sad day for me when I realized that a glass of orange juice(or any juice in general) isn't much better for your health than a can of soda and probably even worse than diet/zero coke.

Orange juice is indeed pretty terrible stuff.

Critic acid is probably the most potent tooth eroding dietary acid you can put in your mouth. This means anything lemon based is out, even sparkling water with lemon flavor. Orange juice is also out simply because of the sheer quantity.

Sugar based soda is terrible because it leads to oral dysbiosis, which is the leading cause of caries (bacterial acids) and gum disease. If you have persistent bad breath or bitterness in your mouth, you will probably need a probiotic treatment.

But here is the kicker: Diet soda is even more acidic than regular soda! Worse, avoid anything with orange or lemon added to it.

Although drinking water is the best thing you can do for your teeth, this doesn't mean you have to give up on juice or soda. It just means you should never drink juice or soda on its own. Always drink it in combination with a meal to soak up the acids. No matter what you eat, you should always wash it down with plain water.

Re: What killed the Florida orange?

#154

Post by exmadscientist »

somat wrote: post #135
wombatpm wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a chemical engineer we study the process for making frozen concentrate orange juice (FCOJ). IIRC you feed the juice into low pressure flash distillation that splits off most of the water. Problem is that many of the volatile compounds go out the top as well, and the resulting concentrate is blah. So you feed back in about 10% raw juice, pack the sludge in cans and freeze em. The fun part was trying to find good es…

Salutes on the post. After hearing the flavor tricks they have to jump through to make "never concentrate" I was sort of hoping the freezing process of FCO kept more of the original flavor. But it sounds like it does not. The industrialization of food is really what enables our modern way of life. But it slightly horrifies me every time I learn more about it.

"Cold pressed" seems to be what you want for keeping flavor. All the good supermarket juices are cold pressed.

Re: What killed the Florida orange?

#155

Post by fuzzfactor »

chrisco255 wrote: post #57
SoftTalker wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are (were?) also dedicated "juice trains" running from Florida to various destinations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juice_Train

Also the passenger train immortalized by Johnny Cash's "Orange Blossom Special": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWz5NzY3Zck

"Rouse and Wise wrote the Orange Blossom Special song as a fiddle tune."

With the characteristic doppler effect of a rapidly passing train horn simulated by the fiddle player.

That Orange Blossom Special, doesn't run through Waldo any more.

Re: What killed the Florida orange?

#156

Post by acdha »

caminante wrote: post #123
acdha wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not the point being made: the article clearly states that those areas did not previously get hit by storms at this level. Climate change is making hurricanes stronger and wetter, so even though they've been a phenomenon for as long as humans have lived there that doesn't mean that the frequency of damaging storms over an area can't change in a way which makes it worse for agriculture. There's an inflation-adju…

OK so the grandparent's comment was clumsy. Now, I see a slate of historical hurricanes in FL from 2004-05 that hit the Ridge area. This contradicts the article as these weren't baby storms. The issue is clearly the rise of this blight bacteria that has made the groves less resilient to storms and has weakend production.

How does that contradict the article? It seems like it supports it if those were the events which helped harm the previously-strong citrus industry - those storms are part of what hit at the peak, starting the decline.

Re: What killed the Florida orange?

#157

Post by patwolf »

HugoTea wrote: post #21
pjc50 wrote: post #15

This reminds me of the collapse of the Gros Michel banana variety, also due to disease. Near-100% loss of a food crop, even a luxury one, is an alarming thing to see though. (I was wondering if climate change would be mentioned, but that doesn't seem to be critical there yet. Starting to be noticed in European grape terroir.)

They mention it as a critical factor, the disease is spread by insects, which is spread by hurricanes. The areas they grow the oranges never used to get hurricanes. > Hurricanes turned out to be a vector for spreading the little winged bug. The wind carried the psyllid all over the state, dropping it off in hundreds of thousands of acres of groves. > It was the perfect storm. And then, of course, there were the actua…

Regardless of the debate of whether climate change has intensified hurricanes, it seems odd to blame hurricanes for being a vector for spreading the bugs. Wouldn't the bugs have spread via wind even if it wasn't climate change induced hurricane winds?

Re: What killed the Florida orange?

#158

Post by fuzzfactor »

eth0up wrote: post #138
lovich wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Florida is a democracy. Florida voted for leaders who ignore these problems because of “woke”. Floridians deserve the results. I will grant clemency for anyone who was born there and isn’t wealthy enough to move out. I will grant 10x hate for anyone who moved there for the politics and complains about the results.

Born here. And for me, the government is the pine flats, the oaks and palmetto scrubs, the springs, the sea, the spirit of the Timucua, sandhill cranes, thunderstorms. If Billy Bowlegs or Geronimo come back, I'll vote for them. I'd consider voting for someone who actually respected this place, but I'm not sure anyone does. I've been to nearly every state, and some other lands, but there's no place finer. I'm pure Flo…

Yup, the things that outlast any government are what means the most.

I'm a native too and I'll add a data point.

It's people who moved to Florida that voted the destructive operators into leadership positions, once they outnumbered the natives.

Re: What killed the Florida orange?

#159

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

jrumbut wrote: post #110
throw0101d wrote: post #45

Meta: giving oranges as gifts at Christmas was a bit of a thing in the past when they used to be much more rare during winter: from Valencia/Ivrea for Europeans, and California/Florida in the US. * https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/why-we-should-br... In the US the Interstate system helped reduce shipping and logistic costs across state lines, and so oranges became more prevalent and less 'special' post-WW2…

They also had a wild system for growing citrus fruit in trenches in the USSR. https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2020/04/fruit-trenches-cul... I've always wanted to try it in my own cold environment.

I've seen Youtube videos of people growing citrus, among other things, in colder climates in "greenhouses" made of plastic sheeting heated by a thick layer of woodchips which slowly decompose and give off heat.

Re: What killed the Florida orange?

#160

Post by slibhb »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #144
tgarrett wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what you are saying is that, yes there has not been an overall increase in hurricanes hitting the US over the last 175 years, but climate change has been specifically and precisely steering the hurricanes towards the orange growing regions of Florida in recent years, and is therefore to blame for the crop failures. You have to diagnose a problem correctly in order to have a chance at solving it.

Well now I'm thoroughly confused. Because your data does seem to overturn the conventional wisdom. Do actual climate scientists claim we're getting more, and stronger, hurricanes now than we did before?

> Do actual climate scientists claim we're getting more, and stronger, hurricanes now than we did before?

The general line is that climate change has probably increased the amount of rainfall associated with hurricanes, possibly the severity of hurricanes (due to sea level rise and warmer water) but there isn't good evidence that it has increased the frequency of hurricanes.

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