California-1b: Develop training data for EDT methods on diseased trees; provide blind samples to EDTs for testing

Huanglongbing (HLB) is a bacterium which infects and kills citrus trees, and is responsible for dramatic declines in citrus production in Florida and Texas. Currently, HLB has been detected by regulatory qPCR in two adjacent neighborhoods south of Los Angeles in California, and many citrus growing regions of California are quarantined for ACP. Early detection technologies are being developed and deployed to detect the disease earlier than regulatory qPCR. The proposed study will add to "CA-1", a proposal submitted to MAC for funding (looks at healthy trees), by adding work on trees likely with very early CLas (before qPCR positive), trees with common CA pathogens other than CLas, adding positive controls, and adding analysis of pathogens such as stubborn, CTV, and viroids on samples from the 1,000 trees in CA-1 and 440 field trees in CA-1b.