Citrus greening, also known as huanglongbing or HLB, has been a devastating force for the Florida citrus industry, where growers have experienced production losses as high as 90% due to the disease, which is spread by the Asian citrus psyllid.
But not all is lost in Florida, as brothers Jerry Mixon and Keith Mixon have invested significantly in production under exclusion netting designed to keep the Asian citrus psyllid at bay.
The Mixon brothers have chosen to grow citrus under protective screen — or CUPS — to protect the trees from the threat of citrus greening and grow sustainable and quality fruit.
“We have seen a continued increase in volume over the last three or four years. One of the things that we’ve been very pleased with is the trend upward last year. We wound up being at about 900 boxes an acre, which is kind of where the university who started all this suggested we’d be,” Jerry Mixon said.
Keith Mixon said that, aside from protecting the trees against Asian citrus psyllids coming in, the CUPS system has also helped the brothers produce better quality fruit.
“What we’re finding is that the screens prevent the wind from touching and shaking the trees at all,” Keith Mixon said. “We get really blemish-free fruit outside and inside, though, is where the real magic is. It’s more mellow than maybe you remember as a kid. This is really mellow it’s packed with all kind of great nutrition and we’re really finding that our grandkids and kids love them and we think the whole world does.”
The Mixons also showed off the newest planting of 240 acres of trees in the CUPS growing system.
“It’s a project that is a culmination of things that my brother Jerry and I have learned over the last 10 years and have really defined a new way of doing this in scale,” Keith Mixon said. "... We’re really excited about how fast these trees grow how quickly they produce and how beautiful the fruit is both outside and inside ... .”
