Scientists Put Citrus in "Deep Freeze"
for Preservation
BY LAURIE GREENE, ASSOCIATE EDITOR
U.S. Department of Agriculture
(USDA) scientists are creating a backup storage site or "genebank"
for citrus germplasm in the form of small buds, called shoot tips, which have
been cryopreserved, according to Jan
Suszkiw, USDA Public Affairs Specialist.
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Plant physiologist Gayle Volk of the
Agricultural Research Service (ARS) is applying the procedure to create a
long-term genebank for important citrus varieties, breeding lines and wild
citrus species. These efforts coincide with concern over the spread of citrus
greening, an insect-borne disease first detected in the U.S. in August 2005,
has been found in California, and which now threatens the nation's citrus crop,
valued at $3.4 billion in 2011-12.
In cryopreservation—that is, the
process of being plunged into liquid nitrogen—Volk saw a way to safeguard
valuable germplasm without fear of losing it to insects or disease, as well as
natural disasters such as freezes, droughts and hurricanes. Instead of
safeguarding whole plants or trees, her approach involves cutting tiny shoot
tips from new growth, called "flush," and cryopreserving the material
for long-term cold storage inside state-of the-art vaults.
To date, Volk, together with ARS
colleagues Richard Lee, Robert Krueger and others, have cryopreserved the shoot
tips of 30 cultivars acquired from citrus germplasm collections managed at
Riverside, Calif., by ARS in collaboration with the University of
California-Riverside.
In preliminary experiments, an
average of 53 percent of shoot tips survived being cryopreserved and thawed for
use in rootstock grafting procedures, which enable generation of whole citrus
plants.
Labels: California Ag Today, Gayle Volk, genebank, HLB wipeout, Jan Suszkiw, Liquid Nitrogen, UC Riverside, USDA ARS
.jpg)
Plant physiologist Gayle Volk of the
Agricultural Research Service (ARS) is applying the procedure to create a
long-term genebank for important citrus varieties, breeding lines and wild
citrus species. These efforts coincide with concern over the spread of citrus
greening, an insect-borne disease first detected in the U.S. in August 2005,
has been found in California, and which now threatens the nation's citrus crop,
valued at $3.4 billion in 2011-12.