Testing offers hope to citrus growers

Indian River industry battered by storms, disease

MERRITT ISLAND — From a 2-acre plot on north Merritt Island, Steve Crisafulli looks at rows of orange trees, searching for a glimmer of hope for Brevard’s dying citrus industry.

Crisafulli, whose last name has been synonymous with the citrus business for five generations, has given over this small grove on his family’s land for a U.S. Department of Agriculture experiment that he prays will unlock the secret of a more diseaseresistant orange tree. The test grove contains about five varieties of citrus trees planted in combination with about 10 root stocks. The goal is to determine which combinations work best.

The Crisafullis view the USDA project as perhaps the last-ditch effort to stem the painful, longterm downturn of the citrus industry. Citrus production in Florida has dropped 59 percent since the 2008-09 season.

Production plunged even more in Brevard County, by 87 percent. And, recently, two of the area’s last traditional citrus retailers — Harvey’s Groves stores in Rockledge and West Melbourne and the Policicchio Groves retail store on north Merritt Island — announced they will not open their stands for the 2017-18 season.

For some, the closing of these iconic roadside attractions is a bittersweet reminder of an older Brevard, a sleepier community before the rumble of rockets, when citrus was king and a muck-free, crystalclear Indian River teemed with sea trout and manatees. Sorting warehouses dominated the landscape on U.S. Highway 1, and trucks filled with fruit plied the roads.

Now, some of those warehouses are crumbling derelicts, as diseases like canker and citrus greening — and hurricanes — have hit the industry hard. Many growers decided it was more lucrative to sell their groves to developers to transform them into residential subdivisions, rather than continue growing oranges or grapefruits.

Indian River citrus has always been world-renowned for its quality and still is, albeit with a deeply declining production — if you can find it. Even longtime local citrus growers like Crisafulli and Frank Sullivan of Cocoa say their families now buy their orange juice at the grocery store. But it’s not nearly the same as the freshsqueezed juice.

“None of it really measures up,” Sullivan said. Crisafulli agrees. “Nothing is as good as the real thing,” he said with a grin.