Heating characteristics and field control effect of rapid citrus huanglongbing steam heat treatment

Abstract: The citrus Huanglongbing (HLB), caused by the bacterium limited in the phloem, Candidatus Liberibacter spp, is a highly destructive citrus disease for the worldwide citrus industry. Until now, the field thermotherapy has showed effect in HLB control. However, all sorts of thermotherapies only focus on the canopy temperature without considering the inner bark or phloem temperature. In this study, indoor and field steam treatment system consists of enclosure, circumstance temperature monitoring system, outer and inner bark temperature testing system. Temperature distribution of outer and inner bark when heating up with different steam supplying pressure and heat preserving time showed that: 1) For the 1-year-old plants, the 65 ℃ was the deadly outer temperature limit. The confirmation of deadly outer bark temperature was the most important in field heat treatment. Based on the inner bark temperature increasing effect, the outer temperature of 60 ℃ was better than lower temperature for inner bark temperature increasing. For achieving the higher outer temperature, more heating time is needed, which allows more heat transfer from the outer to inner bark. For the 9-year-old plants, the 60 ℃ was the better outer temperature without obvious heat damage to the plants. 2) For effective control of HLB, the inner bark temperature was more important than the outer bark temperature. The heat preserving time following steam treatment is beneficial for inner bark temperature increasing. The preserving temperature increase from the treatment with higher transfer pressure was higher than lower pressure. However, based on the total heating effect of inner bark, comprehensively considering the temperature increase from treatment and the following heat preserving, the lower pressure was the better choice. 3) For the 9-year plants, after field heat treatment with the 60 ℃-0.03 MPa-30 s, the results of quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) after treatment showed significant change in the ‘Ca.L.asiaticus’ bacterial titer, combined with vigorous growth from all 4 treated infected trees. The qPCR testing also confirmed that 2 previously infected plants with heat treatment showed no detectable levels of ‘Ca.L.asiaticus’, while untreated infected plants remained highly infected. 4) Based on the steam treatment, it was concluded that the procedure should be as follows: Based on the inner bark temperature increase, first of all, confirm the deadly outer temperature of the specific plant; then, compare the heating effect with different combination of the steam supplying pressure and the following heat preserving time. As a conclusion, from the view of heat transfer, the best steam treatment parameters should be determined based on the analysis of inner bark temperature increase.