Improving Plant Improvement

Many in the Florida citrus industry have long believed that development of trees that are resistant to or tolerant of HLB is the key to coping with the devastating disease. In Florida, most of the work on developing such trees is conducted by researchers at the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The work is part of a process known as plant improvement.

At the June 22 Citrus Research and Development Foundation (CRDF) board of directors meeting, UF/IFAS Dean for Research Robert Gilbert discussed plans to reorganize the UF/IFAS plant improvement operation. CRDF Chief Operating Officer Rick Dantzler said Gilbert, a CRDF director, “made representations about how perceived deficiencies are going to be addressed … The board had a pretty vigorous discussion about that.”

Dantzler explained that there are three stages in the plant improvement process. “Stages 1 and 2 are where all the crossing takes place between different parents, trying to develop offspring that perform better,” Dantzler said. “There has been a sense that the work that takes place in those first two stages has not had the kind of replicated trial data to make informed decisions about what gets entered into Stage 3.” To help address that perceived deficiency, UF/IFAS plans to hire a new horticulturist to ensure that candidates from Stages 1 and 2 have the proper attributes to go to Stage 3, he said.

Stage 3 is where the so-called winners from Stages 1 and 2 are planted in the field to see if they perform well in a commercial growing environment. “The second perceived deficiency was that Stage 3 trials were not occurring with the kind of scientific rigor that created data that growers could use in their planting decisions,” Dantzler said.  

“There is also a need for an additional breeder, and the university pledged to hire another breeder,” Dantzler added. He said longtime UF/IFAS plant breeders Fred Gmitter and Jude Grosser “have been tasked with probably more work than two breeders could do, so they need a third breeder.”

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