Economic Impacts From Early Detection System and Elimination with Citrus Huanglonging (Impactos Econômicos Do Sistema de Detecção e Eliminação Precoce de Citros Com Huanglonging)

The Brazilian citrus industry produced about $ 6.5 billion of GDP and accounted for 230,000 jobs in the country in the 2008/09 crop. However, the production sector has been threatened by a disease first detected in the country in 2004, huangloging (HLB or greening), which has no cure or treatment-resistant variety of citrus, and being the removal of diseased plants the most effective method of control. Thus, this study sought to show the economic impact that could be achieved by improving the detection and subsequent elimination of plants with HLB. To this was considered disease progression in a scenario with the current detection system (27% detection of diseased plants) against a backdrop of improving this system (80% detection of infected plants) and found that this disease can be significantly reduced and controlled in this second scenario. If this improvement in the detection of diseased plants occurs, Brazilian economy could reduce annual losses, compared to current detection system, in the order of R$ 14 billion, R$ 5.8 billion and R$ 2.3 billion, respectively, on the value of output, GDP and remuneration, and addition of about 270 000 jobs in the country.