SMALL farmers and householders have been warned not to purchase cheap uncertified citrus plants from unregistered producers.

The warning has come from programme manager at the Citrus Protection Agency (CPA) in the Ministry of Agriculture and Lands, Alfred Barrett, who told JIS News that unregistered plant producers were selling uncertified citrus plants to unsuspecting consumers.

Barrett said persons were using sour orange rootstock to produce the plants, which are sold without the certification tag.

He said that the sour orange rootstock has proven to be highly susceptible to the tristeza virus, which had devastated citrus orchards islandwide.

“They cannot get clean ‘bud wood’ to produce the plants, neither can they acquire resistant or tolerant root stock, so what they use is sour orange which is a major problem to us,” said Barrett.

Plants provided under the Citrus Replanting Programme, he said, were certified as disease-free by the ministry and carry a tag from the CPA certifying the plant’s nursery origin.

The CPA programme manager said his agency was finding it difficult to apprehend persons involved in selling uncertified plants, because their fields were in places that were difficult to reach, or they transported their plants directly to buyers.

Persons found carrying out this illegal act could be arrested and fined $10,000, or imprisoned for six months, he said.

The Citrus Replanting Programme, jointly funded by the Government of Jamaica and the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB), began in 2000.

The main objective of the project is the replanting of 2,833 hectares of citrus in order to stave off the serious threat posed by the citrus tristeza virus.