Eyewitness News has learned a citrus psyllid has been confirmed in northeast Bakersfield. California Food and Agriculture Department teams have started going door-to-door asking home-owners if they have citrus trees.

The new quarantine zone dips as far south as College Avenue, and west to Alta Vista Drive, it veers up to about Round Mountain Road, and as far east as Fairfax Road.

"The initial finding triggers a quarantine," Kern County Agriculture Commissioner Ruben Arroyo said. He said the citrus psyllid from northeast Bakersfield was confirmed on about May 7.

The zone is 5 miles, and at the center is a 800-meter "treatment area." State workers are now working in that treatment area, asking home-owners if they have any citrus trees.

In Kern County, the first find of a citrus psyllid was in the Wasco area in September 2013. Quarantine zones have been set up there, in Pumpkin Center, Rexland Acres, the Westchester area of Bakersfield, and now the northeast. In all of them, no disease was found.

Arroyo said a psyllid was also identified in Tulare County, and that quarantine takes in a section at the very north end of Kern County. And, in each of Kern's five quarantine zones, only one bug was found. That's important.

However, he says with the five areas now identified, that's nearly the whole city of Bakersfield, and there are new issues with that.

Source - www.freshplaza.com