The Future California Citrus Clonal Protection Program
Creators: name: University Of California Office Of The President
Publisher: name: University of California Office of the President
publisherIdentifier: https://ror.org/00dmfq477
publisherIdentifierScheme: ROR
Year: 2024

description: Citrus viral diseases or graft transmissible diseases of citrus were first discovered in Riverside in the 1930’s. After 20 years of research and after the request and support of the California (CA) citrus industry the University of California, Riverside (the offspring of the 1907 Citrus Experiment Station) established the first citrus foundation material program in the world named “Citrus Variety Improvement Program”. By the 1970’s that program evolved to what is today the CA Citrus Clonal Protection Program-CCPP. The CCPP is a cooperative program with the CDFA, USDA, and the citrus industry of CA represented by the Citrus Nursery Board (CCNB) and the Citrus Research Board (CRB).The CCPP is responsible for the introduction, disease testing, therapy, maintenance, and distribution of citrus germplasm, primarily but not exclusively (AZ, TX, and AL are supported by CCPP) for CA. In other words, every citrus tree grown in CA can be traced back to a mother tree in the 2000 trees 300 varieties CCPP’s collection. The past 3 years alone 48 citrus varieties completed therapy and released from quarantine and 80,000 buds were distributed. A citrus program such as CCPP is only as effective as the tools used for the detection and identification of pathogens. Currently there are reports for more than 25 graft transmissible pathogens causing diseases of citrus. More than half of these diseases have uncharacterized causal agents and subsequently no laboratory technique is available for diagnosis. This situation has limited CCPP to the use of time consuming (months to years), laborious (plants preparation, symptom monitoring), and costly (greenhouse, water,) bio-indexing as the sole mean for reliable diagnosis. Here we propose the identification of unknown pathogens of citrus using modern molecular techniques that will result in genome information which will be used for the development of novel diagnostic techniques. The outcomes of the proposed project will directly impact the CCPP by increasing its diagnostic capacity and decreasing the cost of diagnosis offering alternatives to the time and money demanding bio-indexing. The chain reaction initiated from a successful disease diagnosis followed by pathogen elimination and ultimately the establishment of healthy citrus groves affects growers, consumers, and environment. The environmental impact/footprint of commercial citrus production will be reduced since healthy trees have optimum nutrient and water uptake therefore, minimize soil and underground water pollution (i.e. nitrogen) while maximize water usage and photosynthesis reducing greenhouse atmospheric gases (i.e. CO2). Disease free groves are cheaper to establish and maintain while the production returns are higher than sick ones thus the final price of the product can be reduced. Reduced market prices will give the opportunity to more consumers to access high quality citrus products and therefore, capitalize on the health and nutritional benefits of citrus.