Finally tonight, researchers in Florida are testing a new gene edited tree that they hope will be able to fight off the tiny insects that have been devastating Florida's orange groves for years.

Here's PBS Iowa's Colleen Krantz.

COLLEEN KRANTZ (voice-over): Ron English's family had been in the Florida citrus industry for generations.

But when a disease called citrus greening began ravaging his orange and grapefruit groves, his family business came to a crashing halt.

RON ENGLISH, Valrico, Florida: About 2015, we decided that greening had hurt us enough to where the quality of the fruit wasn't there.

And when it hit us hard.

What we knew to do to keep the trees alive didn't work.

So we made a decision just to shut our operation down.

My father in law and our family had been in the citrus business since 1895.

COLLEEN KRANTZ (voice-over): What happened to the English family has become increasingly common across Florida.

Since citrus greening first emerged about 20 years ago, producers in the state have lost 63 percent of their citrus bearing acres.

Some growers switched to other forms of agriculture while many others, like English, sold to developers.

RON ENGLISH: We were able to sell something we didn't want to do.

COLLEEN KRANTZ (voice-over): All this massive change has been caused by a tiny bacterium spread by the non-native Asian citrus psyllid.

The insects burrow inside leaf folds and deposit the bacteria when they feed.

There is no cure for the infected trees.

All will eventually die.

For generations, Americans have associated Florida with oranges, but the state's orange production has plummeted 90 percent, the lowest annual production in nearly a century.

So now an all-out effort is underway to find a fixed.

And Ron English is back in the citrus game.

He oversees a test grove for a company called Soilcea.

That company has partnered with the University of Florida, which is developing citrus trees that are genetically edited to protect against greening even after exposure to the bacteria.

The company is rapidly refining the most promising genetic edits to make the trees more resistant to the bacteria that cause citrus greens, known for short as HLB.

YIANNI LAGOS, CEO, Soilcea: What we're doing is finding the specific genes that are susceptible to HLB and using CRISPR precision breeding to turn off this interaction.

And we have a tree that we're saying is showing early HLB resistance.

We hope it's going to last for a lot longer.

But we only have trees that have been in the field for a couple of years.

Every six months we're getting more and more confident.

COLLEEN KRANTZ (voice-over): In the past decade, Florida growers have tried one potential solution after another, including using steam to kill the bacteria.

All either failed or required constant management that was too costly.

YIANNA LAGOS: We do feel the pressure they get at the growers quickly because, I mean, they're really struggling, right?

It's really, I mean, it's a real testament to the growers that they've stayed in this industry even with citrus greening.

COLLEEN KRANTZ (voice-over): So far researchers say the trees that result from precision breeding look much healthier than the control trees.

QUINTON ALLEN, Senior Scientist: Different gene targets are showing tolerance where the plant actually still gets infected.

But it's a big, beautiful tree compared to the controls.

We're seeing others where the amount of bacteria in the plant is so low or almost undetectable compared to the controls.

COLLEEN KRANTZ (voice-over): The hope is that the work of the University of Florida and Soilcia will ultimately bear fruit.

But it will take several more years before the gene edited trees can start producing enough oranges.

And then the next stage will involve evaluating taste and yield.

MAN: If everything goes well, I think we'd be looking at the end of 2026 or maybe spring of 2027, where we kind of get those first commercial trees out there.

So to really start bringing the industry back, it's going to take some time.

COLLEEN KRANTZ (voice-over): As for Ron English, he's optimistic that his grandchildren might someday have the opportunity to get the family back into the citrus business, thanks to science.

RON ENGLISH: What we're doing is the key to getting back, and once we can get people started and start planting, I think it'll catch on.

COLLEEN KRANTZ (voice-over): For PBS News Weekend, I'm Colleen Bradford Krantz in Tampa, Florida.