This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: A citrus greening disease treatment rooted in more than a decade of research at Texas A&M AgriLife Research has reached a milestone on the path to commercial availability. Environmental Protection Agency has granted unconditional registration to the novel therapy.
The product, registered by Maryland-based Silvec Biologics Inc., relies on science pioneered at the Texas A&M AgriLife Research and Extension Center at Weslaco by Kranthi Mandadi, Ph.D., center director and professor in the Texas A&M Department of Plant Pathology and Microbiology. Mandadi worked with Bill Dawson, Ph.D., emeritus professor at the University of Florida, and Choaa El-Mohtar, Ph.D., research scientist at the Citrus Research and Education Center. Mandadi and his research team demonstrated that naturally occurring antimicrobial peptides from spinach, known as defensins, can protect citrus trees from Huanglongbing, known as citrus greening, one of the most destructive diseases in modern agriculture.
The registration is issued under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act and allows the spinach defensin-based therapy product to be sold commercially without a tolerance limit—a designation reflecting years of safety data gathered through the research partnership. "After years of collaborative research and development with the citrus industry and private sector, we are pleased to see the spinach defensin therapeutic technology achieve registration with no tolerance limit, which is a testament to the product's safety," Mandadi said. He said the registration marks a turning point for the U.S. citrus industry, which has struggled to prevent citrus greening losses.
"This is the result of research that started right here at our center in Weslaco, but it carries impacts nationwide," said G. Cliff Lamb, Ph.D., director of AgriLife Research. "Seeing our research-enabled development of a fully registered commercial product for producers shows what long-term investment and technology commercialization support in agricultural science can accomplish." Mandadi's work builds on research that began as a collaboration with Erik Mirkov, Ph.D., an AgriLife Research professor and plant pathologist at the Texas A&M AgriLife center at Weslaco.
Together, the two discovered the spinach defensin peptides as a possible treatment. Early studies laid the groundwork for advanced testing, peptide screening and field trials. "The technology uses a naturally non-transmissible strain of CTV (citrus tristeza virus) already common in Florida citrus trees, reprogrammed to prompt the trees to produce the spinach-derived defensin peptide therapy," said Mike Irey, director of research at Southern Gardens Citrus in Clewiston, Florida.
The CTV technology, pioneered by Dawson and his team at the Citrus Research and Education Center, is a therapy delivery approach that does not alter the tree's genome. It functions like an immunization for citrus trees. A small piece of plant material from a specially developed source tree is grafted onto an existing citrus tree.
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