STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Some Florida citrus growers are depending on genetically modified trees. An insect has been spreading what's called greening disease, which has really cut citrus production. The modified trees could ward off the insect. Here's Jessica Meszaros with member station WUSF in Tampa.
JESSICA MESZAROS, BYLINE: On either side of a sandy dirt road, Valencia orange trees tower overhead, with flecks of orange and yellow peeking through leafy green branches. Thirty-two-year-old Morgan McKenna Porter has spent her whole life in citrus groves.
MORGAN MCKENNA PORTER: We're the flagship industry, and it was part of the Florida dream. It was the white picket fence of Florida to own a grove.
MESZAROS: She's the operations manager at her family business, McKenna Brothers, in Lake Wales. They not only manage their own groves but also caretake for others.
MCKENNA PORTER: At its prime and really up until about two or three years ago, we were harvesting and hauling over 2 million boxes. And now we get excited when we hit 500,000.
MESZAROS: That decline is thanks to citrus greening disease. The Asian citrus psyllid - a tiny brown-winged insect - infects these trees with a bacteria that essentially strangles the root system.
MCKENNA PORTER: This yellowing in the leaves, instead of seeing that nice, really vibrant dark green, is typically a sign of greening.
MESZAROS: While the leaves yellow, the fruit turns green. McKenna Porter says it's standard to assume that every tree has been infected. But scientists at the University of Florida have been workshopping solutions with growers over the years. At a lab in Lake Alfred, researcher Lukasz Stelinski introduces me to the latest in greening science - a genetically modified citrus tree.
LUKASZ STELINSKI: Looks like any normal citrus seedling that you might see growing up in a citrus nursery prior to planting.
MESZAROS: Behind some zipped-up netting is an unassuming plant with lots of green leaves sprouting about two feet up from a black pot. But this is no ordinary seedling. This one is a killer. It's been genetically altered to create a protein that forms holes in the gut of a psyllid.
STELINSKI: When we started seeing dead psyllids, those are the days you live for because science is very slow. So when you have something that works, it's a reason to celebrate.
MESZAROS: While the initial adult psyllids can feed on a citrus tree, none of its offspring are able to survive.
STELINSKI: It serves, essentially, as a population sink.
MESZAROS: His team's research has been peer-reviewed and successful in the lab, but the real test will come if the trees survive the next three years in citrus groves. And even if it works, it could take a decade or more to really lift up the citrus industry.
STELINSKI: In the meantime, people are going out of business, and that's the heartbreaking part.
MESZAROS: It takes so long because they all have to be grown from seeds. For now, growers like McKenna Porter continue to use things, such as antimicrobial treatments, to keep the trees they have alive.
MCKENNA PORTER: We'll have additional Band-Aid-type therapies to keep us essentially on life support until there is that tree that's available.
MESZAROS: She hopes when that time comes, there will still be a viable citrus industry here to save.
For NPR News, I'm Jessica Meszaros in Lake Wales, Florida.
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