Niagara fruit crops holding up - Pittsburgh Business Times:

buluhofuce.wordpress.com
But many more orchards and othe areas, including residential areas in the Lake OntarioFruitf Belt, remain to be tested for plum pox virus before September. Teams working for the and the state Department of Agriculture and Markets began taking leaf samplesdin May. Subsequent laboratory tests did not disclose any new outbreaks of the virus inNiagara County, Jacki Klahn, director of the USDA’w Lockport field office, said. In earlhy May, as orchards blossomed, optimism was growing that the spreac ofthe disease, which made its Niagara County debut 2006 migh be waning.
Between 2006 and 2008, plum pox was discovere in several NiagaraCounty orchards, in Orleans Countyu and Wayne County, east of Though harmless to humans and the virus poses an economic risk for commercial fruitr growers because they must destroy all susceptible trees withibn 1.5 miles to 2 miles of an identified hot Plum pox destroys the commercial value of the fruit that it attacks because it discolorz and disfigures peaches, plums, prunex and nectarines. In New York statwe counties lying alongLake Ontario’s sout shore, fruit growing is a multi-million-dollar industry.