(Texas A&M AgriLife photo)
Texas A&M AgriLife Research scientists have made a discovery that should help combat fastidious or “unculturable” pathogens, such as Candidatus Liberibacter asiaticus, the HLB causal agent. HLB is also known as citrus greening disease.
Kranthi Mandadi, a researcher with Texas A&M, and his colleagues have been working several years on developing new technologies to fight the fastidious pathogens. Mandadi and his team work at the Texas A&M AgriLife Research and Extension Center in Weslaco, Texas. The results of their work, “Plant hairy roots enable high throughput identification of new antimicrobials against Candidatus Liberibacter spp.,” were recently published in Nature Communications.
Fastidious plant pathogens infect citrus and numerous other crops. “The greatest obstacle to understanding and controlling fastidious pathogens was the inability to cultivate them in a laboratory setting and to screen for lots of potential therapies,” said Leland “Sandy” Pierson, head of Texas A&M’s Department of Plant Pathology and Microbiology. “But Dr. Mandadi and his team have …..
Read more about how Texas Research Should Help With HLB on the Citrus Industry website.