Starting in the late 1950s, the emergence of fusiform rust on Southeastern pine trees including slash pine, loblolly pine, and longleaf pine, led to massive tree mortality within the pine industry. This obligate parasitic pathogen is notorious for infecting young trees in newly planted areas within the first few years of growing. The pine industry was still rather new at the time of this initial outbreak, so many newly planted forests had large-scale mortality because the trees were not yet old enough to be resilient to the disease or harvested. Florida’s pine industry in particular was booming with an increase in plantation acreage from in 1952 to upwards of in 1990. Because of the complicated lifecycle of "Cronaritum quercuum" f. sp. "fusiforme", the fungal causal agent of fusiform rust, the management strategies of pruning diseased stems, reducing fertilization, and discarding infected seed were not sufficient to prevent million-dollar annual loses.