As the price of limes increase in Mexico, the "green gold" has become a precious commodity that has citrus growers and truckers who deliver the crop on edge because of a recent rise in theft of the product.

According to USA Today, gun-touting thieves have been stealing limes off of farmers' trees and the truck drivers have been shipping the product with the help of escorts for protection.

Many trucks carrying the coveted fruit, which can be worth about $50,000, have been targeted and seized by criminals, said Adriana Melchor, director of Inverafrut, a fruit exporter.

"There are a lot of people stealing limes, even entering the groves with weapons," she said.

The decrease in lime production and increase in prices are attributed to plagues, the harsh winter and threats from organized crimes, Today reported.

In some Mexican states, the price of limes can cost the same amount as chicken, one Mexican tabloid -- La Prensa -- wrote. Most newspapers in Mexico are reporting that lime prices have soured to more than $6 for every kilogram or 2.2 pounds in a few locations.

Mario Aguilar, a fruit vendor in Mexico City near the president's residence, told Today that the prices have more than doubled from a year ago.

"One year ago it was 15 to 20 pesos ($1.15 to $1.50) per kilogram," Aguilar said. "Now it's 50 pesos ($3.80)."

Despite the citrus being a popular flavoring for many Mexican dishes much like chilies and salt, the high prices have caused sales to drop, other vendors told Today.

Taco stand vendors such as Fidel Gonzalez have resorted to rationing their limes to customers in order to keep costs down. And growers and restaurant owners also said that the quality of the limes has decreased.

Lorena Martinez, director of Profeco, the consumer prosecutor's office, said that since December the average price of limes have surged by 221 percent. She also said that any company hoarding the fruit could be prosecuted and slapped with a 10-year prison sentence.

Melchor said that Inverafrut in the state of Veracruz, which is famous for producing Persian limes, suffered because of Hurricane Ingrid last September and the extremely cold weather this winter. She said that American customers have offered to pay $90 for a 40-pound box of limes, which is seven times more than last year's price of $12 a box.

Other producers around the country such as the western state of Colima attributed its lack of sufficient crops to a plague that spread through the area.

In Michoacan, bad weather was certainly a cause, however, the infighting between drug cartels and self-defense groups also created insecurity among producers who couldn't work in their lime groves last years, said Leonardo Santibanez, a Citrus Growers Association of the Apatzingán Valley spokesman.

"Producers didn't go out to their groves, didn't attend to their trees as they should have," he said. "This brought about smaller harvests."