Growers Plan to Eliminate Export Peril : Agriculture: Japan says it will not accept lemon and orange crops infested with the Fuller rose beetle or its eggs after 1990.

Threatened with the loss of the important Japanese export market, citrus growers in Ventura County and throughout the state are scrambling to beat a 1990 deadline to rid their crops of an insect with which they have coexisted for years.

Japan, which annually imports about $100 million in oranges and lemons from Ventura County, has demanded that shipments be totally free of the live eggs of the Fuller rose beetle, an insect that does not harm fruit but feeds on ornamental plants such as roses, bonsai trees and shrubs. But U.S. growers have not succeeded in eradicating the bug after more than two years of effort.

The Japanese inspect the fruit when it arrives and fumigate infested loads. They charge California growers for the inspection and fumigation, then pay them less money for their fruit, depending on the amount of fumigation damage.

After 1990, California growers worry that the Japanese will reject infested shipments. That could spell economic disaster, said Pete Dinkler, packinghouse manager for Limoneira Associates in Santa Paula.

“Our industry sells 30% of its lemon crop to Japan,” Dinkler said. “They buy our best sizes and best grade, and they pay top dollar for it.”

But eliminating the beetle is expensive. Growers say the required measures increase their pest-control costs by 20% to 40%, and even then don’t do the job completely.

“We’ve reduced the numbers over the years,” said Ventura County Agriculture Commissioner Earl McPhail, “but I think it will be extrememely difficult to control them 100%.”

Nevertheless, that’s the stipulation. Representatives from both governments and the industry agreed during a 1987 meeting in Los Angeles to a phased reduction that would eliminate the beetle in exports to Japan by June, 1990. The U.S. Department of Agriculture is now in negotiations with the Japanese government to determine whether the current eradication level--which state officials describe as 99%--is acceptable.

But eradicating the beetle seems like an unacceptable requirement to some growers, who claim that the Fuller rose beetle already exists in Japan. They view the restrictions aslittle more than a protectionist scheme to limit imports and boost prices for Japan’s own small citrus industry.

“It is hard to believe that it doesn’t exist there, but I can’t say for sure one way or the other,” said Curt Anderson, a spokesman for Sherman Oaks-based Sunkist Growers, the world’s largest citrus marketing cooperative. “But we have to deal with reality, and the reality is that they view the beetle as a pest. Regardless of the motivation, we are taking it seriously.”

The Japanese government, however, insists the motives behind the quarantine of fruit arriving infested with the Fuller rose beetle are strictly agricultural, not political.

“The plant quarantine is only for the scientific purpose of preventing an invasion of the insect,” said Takeshi Nishio, who supervises the Imported Plant Quarantine section at the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries in Tokyo. “It helps our growers only in that it keeps the beetle from their trees.”

He disputed the assertion by some U.S. growers that the beetle is already present in Japan.

“It is non-existent in Japan now,” he said. “We have no Fuller rose beetle now.”

The Fuller rose beetle grows to about half an inch long. It cannot fly. The adult female deposits its eggs under the button at the stem of the fruit, which causes no scarring or other damage. The eggs hatch in about two weeks.

Southern California growers generally have ignored the beetle. But they couldn’t ignore the Japanese ultimatum.

The 6,000 Sunkist growers in California and Arizona who own the cooperative voted last January on whether to simply forgo the Japanese market.

It wasn’t much of a contest.

With Japan accounting for about 20% of Sunkist’s gross revenues and new markets taking decades to develop, the growers decided to comply with the Japanese requirement.

“The Japanese market is vital to our business,” Dinkler said. “If we didn’t have that market, we wouldn’t be able to survive very long.”

Sunkist researchers have been working with entomologists at the University of California, Riverside, the UC agricultural extension office in Ventura, and Riverside-area growers to find the best method to eradicate the beetle.

At a time when Ventura County growers and the agricultural industry at large were veering away from chemicals and toward more natural pest-control techniques, the industry researchers studied established and highly toxic chemical sprays, said entomologist Phil Phillips, integrated pest control adviser for the Ventura extension office.

“Their standard method of operation has been to go right to pesticides and see what they can do,” Phillips said. “That’s their mind-set.”

The researchers recommend Guthion and Sevin, both of which can be highly toxic to people as well as insects. Growers don’t like the cost, the extensive additional safety measures and the blanket kill of all insects, including the beneficial insects Ventura County growers have been developing for years to attack pests.

“We have some orchards that we haven’t sprayed for 10 years,” said Jeff Williams, pest control manager at Limoneira. “I’ve got a family and kids, too, and I don’t want to do anything to hurt any of them or anybody else.”

The researchers also have recommended another pesticide, Kryocide. Relatively harmless to people, Kryocide kills insects that eat it, Phillips said. It does not harm beneficial insects. But Kryocide is expensive and must be applied repeatedly.

Growers now favor a sticky, nonpoisonous goop that catches beetles when it is painted around tree trunks. They hope that the band--plus the practice of skirting, which cuts the canopy of leaves a few feet off the ground--will stop most adult beetles from getting into the trees and depositing their eggs into the fruit.

But the material also causes problems. Sun or too much heat on the band can burn the tree, girdling its trunk and killing its fruit.

In addition to efforts in the field, packers and shippers also take pains to root out the beetle. Once the fruit is picked, some packing houses isolate the high-quality citrus bound for Japan, scouring it for infestation. At the Port of Long Beach, USDA inspectors, trained by the Japanese, inspect the fruit again. But those inspections reduced the number of rejected shipments and subsequently fumigated in Japan by only 3%, according to the California Citrus Quality Council.

Meanwhile, the countdown to 1990 continues. Growers hope to find the right combination of treatments to trap the beetle.

“The rules are there, and the time period is very short,” said Limoneira’s Williams. “We’re trying to react faster than nature is going to let us.”