The Citrus Research and Development Foundation (CRDF) convened for its July board of directors meeting with several projects under consideration.
The board approved funding of a work program for the plant improvement teams of the U.S. Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service and the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences. The project is funded for three years. It sets the stage for each institution’s team to work in concert with the other so that greater efficiencies can be realized, but also so that new germplasm can be evaluated side-by-side.
“One of the more important provisions was the sharing of both institutions of a bioinformatics person to identify the genetic and phenotypical traits of the most promising varieties more quickly so that we can find the ‘tree of the future’ as fast as possible,” said Rick Dantzler, CRDF chief operating officer.
The board also continued funding projects related to zinc and brassinosteroids, improving the uptake of oxytetracycline (OTC) by using callose inhibitors, and the measurement of improvements in tree health and yield from injecting OTC.
“We also had a good discussion of what would be required to tee up the consideration by regulators of using streptomycin or kasugamycin in concert with OTC,” Dantzler said. “We may ultimately decide against pursuing it, but it probably makes sense to begin doing some of the required work in case we do seek a label.”
Kasugamycin was discovered in the 1960s in Japan and was developed to control the fungus that causes rice blast disease. It was later discovered kasugamycin could inhibit bacterial growth.
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