When life gives you greening, grow lemons?

LAKE ALFRED – An oil boom is flying under the radar in Florida.

That’s lemon oil, not the kind arising from the liquid remains of dead dinosaurs.

About 90 citrus growers turned out to a Tuesday morning seminar, OJ Break – Lemon Workshop, to learn if they want to participate in the boom.

The University of Florida’s Citrus Research and Education Center sponsored the seminar to help distressed citrus growers explore alternative crops after the fatal bacterial disease citrus greening has destroyed more than 70 percent of the state’s annual harvest of its standard citrus varieties — oranges, grapefruit, tangerines and tangelos – during the past decade. It had previously sponsored seminars on other alternatives, including peaches, olives and pomegranates.

“We all know too well the destructive nature of (greening),” said George Hamner, president of Indian River Exchange Packers in Vero Beach, a grower and packinghouse operator. “Obviously the interest in lemons comes from our strong desire to stay with citrus rather than abandon our rich heritage. In our desire to hang in there, we ask ourselves, ‘Can you explain how life gave us lemons?’ We are hanging in there, and as growers, we are seeking successful citrus alternatives.”

Exchange Packers is the largest handler of fresh lemons in Florida, Hamner said. It has packed Florida lemons since the 1980s.

Lemons have been grown in Florida since the 1920s, but always on a much smaller scale compared with oranges and the other standards, said Chris Oswalt, the UF citrus agent for Polk County.

There are no official statistics because the U.S. Department of Agriculture does not track commercial lemons in Florida, but Hamner estimated the state currently has between 500 and 700 commercial lemon acres. That compares with California's 47,274 acres and Arizona's 10,500 acres, said Hamner, citing USDA data.

Globally the U.S. ranked fourth in lemon production last year with 791 tons, well behind Mexico at 2,580 tons, Argentina with 1,550 tons and the European Union with 1,484 tons, he said.

“The exciting part of growing and selling lemons is that it’s a growing market,” he said. “It’s nice to feel good again about going out into the field.”

Not only is the lemon market growing, the trees thrive in the state’s climate.

“If you want to get a good feeling about citrus again, plant lemon trees. They grow very fast,” said Hamed Doostdar, owner of HD Crop Consulting in Fort Pierce, who has been advising lemon growers in Florida and Central and South America for about 15 years. “It’s going to take six months (from planting) to get them started, and after that they grow like wildfire.”

A sapling lemon tree will grow to 11 feet within two years, he added.

The best part is that, while a lemon tree will get infected by greening, the disease doesn’t have the harmful effects it does on Florida’s standard citrus varieties, such as smaller fruit size and increased rates of pre-harvest drop, Doostdar and others said.

The reason is that lemon trees have the ability to regenerate greening-damaged phloem tissue, which carries water and nutrients around the plant, said Fred Gmitter, professor of citrus genetics and breeding at the Lake Alfred center.

“If you take reasonably good care of (infected) trees, lemons will bounce back every year,” he said. “It’s got a natural ability to repair the plumbing.”

While Hamner and other Florida growers have typically grown lemons for the fresh fruit market, the demand for lemon juice and lemon oil is spurring interest from the state’s citrus juice processors for lemons, said Doostdar and Gmitter.

Florida’s declining orange and grapefruit crops have left the state’s juice plants with a lot of excess capacity, Gmitter said, and they’re looking for alternatives to process. Annually, about 95 percent of Florida’s orange crop and most grapefruit go to juice.

“There’s a lot of capacity out there to make lemon juice and lemon oil,” he said. “There’s incredible demand. Oil is really gold for that fruit.”

Florida processors are offering new lemon growers contracts of up to 15 years' duration if they commit their harvest to the company, Doostdar said. That’s driving the current expansion in planting.

Like any agricultural commodity, lemons come with downsides in both growing and handling, the experts said.

On the growing side, lemon trees are much more sensitive to damage from freezes than oranges, grapefruit and tangerines, Gmitter and Oswalt said. Those standard varieties don’t sustain damage until temperatures drop to 28 or lower for at least four hours.

Research shows damage to lemons begins at 30.5 degrees, Oswalt said.

And damage can occur over a shorter duration, Gmitter added.

Lemons grown for the fresh market are harder to harvest and handle, Hamner said. That’s because consumers demand fresh produce that is free of blemishes and other cosmetic damage.

Harvesting costs are higher because the lemons must be clipped off the tree instead of pulled, which cause a cosmetic blemish called “black tips,” he said. Too much jostling of the fruit during harvesting and handling will produce black marks called “oil spotting.”

“Black tips are the bane of Florida sales,” Hamner said. “Before we ever pick and process lemons in Florida, we’re already at a disadvantage.”

Hamner concluded his talk with a different take on the traditional advice about dealing with life’s lemons.

“When life gives you lemons, grab some Tequila and salt,” he said.

Kevin Bouffard can be reached at kevin.bouffard@theledger.com or at 863-802-7591.