The Citrus Research and Development Foundation (CRDF) held its governance and plant improvement committee meetings along with its board of directors meeting on Dec. 3 in Sebring. Rick Dantzler, chief operating officer, said several orders of business were conducted as the year comes to a close.
“The CRDF board of directors approved four projects at its last board meeting of the year,” he said. “The first is a project conducted by Swadeshmukul Santra, which uses a nano adjuvant to get copper and micronutrients into trees. The adjuvant is a GRAS (generally recognized as safe) compound according to the regulatory agencies, so significant hurdles are not anticipated.”
Santra is a professor at the University of Central Florida NanoScience Technology Center and Department of Chemistry.
Manjul Dutt, University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS) assistant professor of horticultural sciences, received funding for his search to identify targets and use a novel CRISPR technology to edit genes that would result in a non-GMO transformed tree tolerant to HLB.
“The third project is a one-year project with Ron Brlansky, UF/IFAS professor emeritus, which seeks to use CRISPR to knock out a pararetrovirus thought to cause citrus blight,” Dantzler said. “Finally, the board approved what will likely be the last of the work involving the Bayer project. If it goes as planned, the plant defense inducer found over the course of the project will be validated enough for Bayer to bring it to the marketplace.”
The Bayer project began in 2017 with funding from CRDF and various federal and industry partners.
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