A pest that can spread lethal crop diseases was discovered late last month in a shipment from Ventura County to a nursery in Marin, the county agricultural department said Wednesday. A county inspector “was able to catch it with his bare hands off a plant in the shipment. Pretty awesome,” said Stefan Parnay, the deputy agricultural commissioner. “It makes it really clear…that detection is the key to pest prevention.” The glassy-winged sharpshooter is a pest that can spread a bacterium, Xylella fastidiosa, which causes plant diseases among grapes and almonds, as well as landscape plants. According to the county, a tree “heavily infested” with the sharpshooter can lose 10 to 15 gallons of fluid daily. The sharpshooter is believed to have arrived in California from the southeastern United States in 1989, on nursery plants, and has since caused millions of dollars in damage to vines and other plants. Ventura County is under a state quarantine because it is known to harbor the pest. All plant shipments from state quarantine areas—virtually all of which are in Southern California—to unaffected areas must be inspected. Marin receives $79,000 annually from the state to check for the pest, but it would cost 20 times that amount to combat an infestation, Mr. Parnay said. It’s also one of the pests that the California Department of Food and Agriculture, in its recently finalized plant pest prevention program, said cannot be effectively eradicated with organic methods. Mr. Parnay, however, said decisions on how to eradicate pests during an infestation are made on case-by-case bases and that the county would follow an integrated pest management approach, which says that pesticides are the last resort. The nursery has sent all the plants in the shipment back to
Ventura.