A Florida biotech company is asking the Agriculture Department to fast-track a potential solution to the disease that’s devastated the state’s citrus industry.
Soil Culture Solutions asked the USDA’sAnimal and Plant Health Inspection Service to green-light a genetically engineered rootstock that can grow trees resistant to citrus greening disease, which has wiped out most of Florida’s commercial industry in recent years.
The company, which goes by the name Soilcea, created the rootstock through CRISPR technology, or Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats, which allows scientists to alter the genes of plants. This can help create varieties able to fend off diseases.
If APHIS grants the new treatment nonregulatory status, the company says that could smooth the way to planting new trees that are less susceptible to the disease, which is also spreading to other states.
