Washington State University researchers have received a $2.1 million grant for research on huanglongbing, or citrus greening disease. Scientists have not been able to grow cultures of the bacterium that causes the disease. Biochemist David Gang, a fellow at the university’s Institute of Biological Chemistry, and two Washington State colleagues aim to develop methods of growing it, a needed step toward developing strategies against HLB. “The simple answers didn’t work and we need a way to fight this,” Gang said in a news release. “This disease is wiping out the citrus industry in the U.S., and in five years there may not be any citrus orchards left.” The two-year grant is part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Specialty Crop Research Initiative Citrus Disease Research and Extension Program. “We have two years to show the USDA we’re making progress,” Gang said. “We want to figure this out quickly and help out this vital industry.” The HLB bacterium survives and multiplies in psyllids and in trees. But in a lab setting, it does little and eventually dies. The bacterium, Gang said, is missing something in its metabolism that doesn’t allow it to grow in a lab environment. He aims to identify that missing metabolic component.
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Topic: Washington State Researchers Target HLB (Read 732 times)