While one of Florida’s most marketed crops declines, UF researchers hope tea can fill in the gap left by the depleted citrus industry.
Since 2005, Florida’s citrus crop output has been steadily decreasing due to citrus greening, a disease which rots the trees, said Brantlee Spakes Richter, a senior lecturer in the UF plant pathology department. Richter, and UF doctoral student James Orrock are now tasked with studying tea’s plausibility as an alternative.
“The good thing about tea is that it’s a commodity crop,” said Orrock. “So you have a bunch of different prices and markets to hope for.”
In May 2016, the two researchers helped plant eight strains of camellias, which is the plant tea comes from, to see how they would fare in Florida’s climate, Richter said.
Some of the eight strains of tea that they are studying have thrived, but a few have come close to dying off, Richter said.
A few strains were expected to not survive due to their genetic makeup, she said.
Although introducing tea into Florida’s ecosystem has the potential to bridge the gap left by the dying citrus crops, U.S.grown tea will likely never be cheaper than existing tea prices, Orrock said.
As of now, researchers are still unsure of tea’s future as a crop in Florida, but some tea strains give them hope, Ritcher said.
“We’re not really sure yet where Florida will come in yet in this playing fi eld,” she said.
Researchers are growing potted camellias to determine if tea could be used as an alternative to Florida's citrus crop.
