A fruit feud has broken out in the US, with the agricultural departments of California and Florida at loggerheads over citrus.

Last week, the Florida Department of Agriculture issued a new regulation requiring all citrus fruit shipped from California to Florida to be inspected, fumigated and certified free of a fungal disease known as Septoria spot.

"Florida doesn't have it, and frankly, we would like to keep it that way," said Liz Compton, a spokeswoman for the state agriculture department.

"We are not saying we won't take their fruit, we are saying they have to follow certain measures. We don't understand why that is so onerous."

But California's growers and officials - not unknown to enjoy the odd protective tendency themselves - say Florida’s move is all about retaliation against the federal government, which has stopped Florida growers shipping citrus to other citrus-growing states because of the canker epidemic there.

"We're not shipping fruit to Florida," said Joel Nelsen, president of California Citrus Mutual. "If you start subjecting yourself to those arbitrary rules that anybody puts in place you will have arbitrary rules for each state and country."

Nelsen's group, along with Sunkist Growers and two other California grower and shipper organisations, filed a lawsuit in Tallahassee on Friday seeking to overturn the new regulation. The suit claims Septoria is not a threat to Florida citrus, and that only two pieces of fruit with the fungus were found in California during the past season.

An emergency hearing is set for December 18.

The US department of agriculture's canker ban was first imposed in June 2006 and California citrus interests annoyed Floridian counterparts by insisting that Florida fruit should be restricted from all states except northern states east of the Mississippi.

California's citrus industry typically ships seven million cartons of citrus to Florida annually, according to the lawsuit. The new regulation would cost shippers around £50 million, it said.

Nelsen said Septoria spot, caused by the fungus Septoria citri, was identified in California 50 years ago, and it has never been transmitted to Florida.

USDA official Richard Dunkle has also said the disease is considered to be of minor significance, is reported in most of the world's citrus-growing regions and would not require a federal quarantine.

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