A Race to Save the Orange by Altering Its DNA:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/28/science/a-race-to-save-the-orange-by-altering-its-dna.html?hpw&_r=0

I hope it works. I would take some if they were for sale ever. Thankfully aside from some dooryard citrus, my trees are miles from the nearest grove but I keep a close eye on them regardless.

Sounds like the biggest fight might not be greening, the biggest fight might be GMO hysteria. I have over 50 different citrus varieties, seven of which are large trees growing in the ground inside a greenhouse that we used to use to grow transplants of various crops that were then transplanted into our farm fields. The citrus trees are completely safe, as they are over 2,000 miles from the nearest citrus grove, plus the physillid could never survive Colorado's cold winters, so a wide and full supply of citrus is safely in hand. Lastly, eventually, as with just about everything, the greening citrus problem, I believe -- ' this too will pass". The very best to Mr. Kress and Southern growers, we are hoping for your sucess. God bless. - Millet

Yesterday, Sunday, a knowledgable friend who had read this article asked me if I was worried about Greening and what I was going to do. Of course I have asked myself the very questions many times without having a satsfactory answer. I told my friend that there are too many variables to derive a plan at this point and that my grove being geographically separated from known endangered areas gives me some hope that an innoculent may someday be available before Greening finds my trees. In the end though if all else fails I'll just enjoy my Muscadines that I have strategically trellised between each row of Citrus.

Yeah Darkman, same idea, at the urging of the local Ag extension service I have planted a wide variety of non-citrus, everything from grapes to Jujube, just to hedge my bets. Besides how many orange trees does a non-commercial grower need?

It seems as though part of the problem comes from huge monoculture groves (as well as globalization). The insects and diseases wouldn't be able to spread so quickly without these two factors interplaying.

*I am not advocating anything different, just making an observation.

Re: The battle for consumer acceptance.
I think the comments on the NYT website generally reflect the thinking of those in the "anti"GMO crowd. I.e., while there are those who reflexively dismiss the concept of a pig or virus gene in their citrus, those are relatively few. Most are more concerned with the potential for corporate market capture and for propping up what they see as an inherently unsustainable model of agriculture. Thus, the the widely cited example of glyphosate resistant crops, which were initially heralded as an more economical and actually environmentally friendly alternative to conventional cultivation and spray routines. By many analyses, however, these GMO crops have ended up increasing costs to farmers, consumers, and the environment, with increased seed prices, legal and technical (sterile seeds) barriers to seed-saving (which, of course, causes stagnation in traditional methods of breeding desired traits into crops), migration of the gene to non-GMO crops, and the increased production, use, and abuse of glyphosate, and now other herbicides. What followed, naturally enough, was the rapid adaptation of glyphosate resistant weeds that have and will make the continued "responsible" use of glyphosate - what was perhaps the least toxic herbicide in widespread use - impossible. The primary savings to farmers from the whole affair seemed to come only when the Round-up patent ran out in 2000 (there was, to be fair, some savings from reduced tillage and from decreases in the prices of competing herbicides, but this was largely offset by the increased price of seed and, for a while before the patent ran out, Round-up itself). Monsanto, of course, made "bank", and has already come out with a second generation of seeds before the patent on the first generation expires in 2014. With that precedent, it is hardy surprising that many are skeptical.
In many ways, though, citrus are an attractive target for GMO tactics in the US - commercial citrus production is relatively limited geographically and there are no native wild populations, within the genus, at least, that would be at risk from gene transfer.
Lacking from this and every article I've seen on greening has been mention of how it is managed in areas where it is endemic or long-standing. In Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Myanmar, dooryard citrus are a common sight, and while I imagine intensive chemical psyllid control or greening compensation is rare (those who I asked about it universally said they never sprayed anything or fertilized), none of the trees I saw seemed affected. China and Tawain both have commercial citrus industries, that, while smaller than Brazil or the U.S. (and perhaps this is because of greening?? I don't know), still churn out quite a lot of citrus despite having had greening for a century, at least. While it seems possible that Chinese producers just deal with it via chemical Armageddon aimed at the psyllid vectors, I doubt Taiwanese consumers and regulators would allow that there. Ditto with South Africa. Does anyone have any insight on this aspect of greening?[/u]

The spread of disease, rapidity of its movement, life cycle, and extent of economic damage, has a lot to do with the volume of mono culture within a given area. Ironically, it is mono culture that reduces cost and therefore increases profit. Much of commericial agricultural is produced on a mono culture basis. Disease is just one of the risks accepted with mono culture. Never spraying nor fertilizing, as in the example given above concerning countries such as Vietnam, is a sure road to disaster in real world commercial agricultural --- or a great way to go broke quickly. - Millet

From what I have read, HLB has almost universally had a devastating impact on the citrus industries of infected areas. For example, here's a research paper (albeit somewhat dated) looking into the the economic impact of HLB on the Thai citrus industry.

http://www.ivia.es/iocv/archivos/proceedingsXIII/13th279_285.pdf

They note that crop yields in Thailand are 13 tons/hectare versus 50-90 tons/hectare in regions without HLB infection. It seems like most of the recommendations for going forward (from 1996, when the paper was written) are not too dissimilar to what is being done in FL today.

Education, clean budwood sources, removal of HLB infection sources, controlled insecticide spraying to target psyllids, etc...

It is clear that currently there is no magic bullet that solves the issue. This is why you see multiple avenues of research focused targeting various aspects of the disease. Gene insertion research, is just one part of this effort. Work is also underway to control the psyllids, to controll the Candidatus Liberibacter bacterium directly, and to identify HLB resistance/tolerance in existing citrus germplasm.

According to the article" a transgenic tree (ie GMO ) could take $20million and a decade to develop".
That is just for one variety of one type of Citrus, ie one juicing orange variety.
Presumably the same would have to be done for at least one variety of each of lemon, lime, grapefruit, mandarin, if they are to continue in commercial production.
Mandarin has many commercial cultivars now, so most of these will go out of production, and only one or two GMO mandarins developed to replace them.

As for any of the unusual cultivars that we discuss on this forum ?????

Rootstock breeding has created many species hybrids, ie Citranges etc to attempt to solve particular problems. This research is ongoing and will probably always be.

How are Citrus rootstocks going to figure in the GMO regime?
Will GMO rootstocks also need to be developed ?
Will non GMO rootstocks put at risk the GMO scion tree ?
There are at least 2 or 3 rootstocks used for each Citrus cultivar.

The main problem I see with a greening resistant GMO citrus, is that if another new disease comes onto the scene the GMO will be susceptible to that, so back to square one.

Pagnr, I agree completely. This is why at best genetically modified citrus should only be one piece of the solution. For example, there is already a major effort underway to identify and study current citrus germplasm that has improved tolerance and/or resistance to HLB.

Here's an older thread touching on the subject:

link

In my mind, the bigger question is what would the overall response be if the only avenue that demonstrates long term success against HLB is genetically modified citrus? I believe that if a genetic solution is found, all of the major commercial varieties would have genetically modified variants with HLB resistance in relatively short order. There are currently multiple varieties of corn w/ Round-up resistance, so I would not anticipate this being a major issue.

Now of course, all of the unusual citrus varieties would be left out in the cold...

I've been in agriculture most of my adult life. The last and most important word in farming is ---- PROFIT. The more programs required to protect a crop = additional labor, additional chemical, additional fuel, additional equipment, additional repairs, additional salaries and less PROFIT or a LOSS. - Millet

Re: Scott: Thanks for the article, even if concerning - especially the Chinese experiment involving the eradication of all back yard citrus and wild HLB hosts and the institution of a routine of spraying 10-13 times annually.

Re: Darkman: I agree with you regarding civil rights, but, as I understand the program, the canker eradication program, at least in its final iteration, was pretty clearly Constitutional. From what I've read, the program started out with a two fold approach: 1) the USDA compensated commercial growers whose trees were destroyed; 2) dooryard citrus owners were uncompensated, under the rationale that their trees that were within the eradication zone had no market value. I think that the issue of whether the logic employed to value the dooryard citrus really resulted in "just compensation" is debatable (really - there are good arguments both ways), but the state eventually began compensating homeowners whose dooryard citrus were destroyed, which remedied any quarrel that it was unConstitutional. In any case, I think it's a far better use of eminent domain than taking property to build a sports stadium or a Pfizer facility.