Developing disease-resistant, high-quality improved crop varieties to benefit agricultural producers and consumers may seem like a “hairy” task, but Texas A&M AgriLife Research scientists may have gotten to the root of the issue. A new biological technology that develops and multiplies disease-resistant citrus plants using “hairy roots” is under development by an AgriLife Research team led by Kranthi Mandadi, Ph.D. Mandadi is …

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) announced an investment of nearly $11 million for research to combat Huanglongbing (HLB), commonly known as citrus greening disease. HLB, caused by an insect bacterium, is the most severe threat to global citrus production. “NIFA’s Emergency Citrus Disease Research and Extension program brings the nation’s top scientists …

The rhizosphere, defined as the soil environment that surrounds the plant roots, is a rich and diverse habitat for microbes. Some members of the rhizosphere microbiome (or collection of microbes), are good, others bad while many are just there and don’t provide any benefits or harm to the host. One function of the good microbes in the rhizosphere is to …

University of Florida researchers hope to discover new methods to help citrus growers fight the deadly citrus greening (or Huanglongbing) disease with cost effective, long-term sustainable treatments with the support of recently awarded federal grants.  Three teams of scientists from UF’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences received nearly $4.5 million in U.S. Department of Agriculture funds to study new …