Between the July and October, Citrus transformation Facility continued its operation without any interruptions. Within this period, we accepted three new orders. All orders required production of transgenic Duncan grapefruit plants.
In the last three months, CTF produced 74 plants. Among the produced plants there were: six Duncan plants (BB3), 18 Duncan plants (BB4), seven Duncan plants (HGJ34), three Duncan plants (HGJ74), two Duncan plants (HGJ87), three Duncan plants (HGJ88), ten Duncan plants ZM14, four Mexican lime plants (M2SF), one Mexican lime plant (contSF), one Murraya (BB1), one Pomelo plants (HGJ68), five Valencia plants (BB3), five Valencia plants (BB4), eight Valencia plants (JJ7). Codes in parentheses represent names of different binary vectors (genes) used in transformation experiments.
One of the CTF employees working on the USDA grant left the lab in the first week of September. After securing additional funding from other participants of that USDA grant, I have submitted position description to HR department and expect to hire new employee before the end of the year. Currently, there are five employees in the CTF.
Most of the fruit of Duncan grapefruit and Valencia orange that was stored in the cold room at CREC rotted and started growing mold. Only six bins of Valencia and ten bins of grapefruit were kept as a source of seeds. The crew working in A. Schumann’s CUPS harvested half of the yield from Duncan grapefruit trees we have there. These fruits will be used for seed extraction in a matter of weeks. We will ask A. Schumann’s crew to harvest the rest of Duncan grapefruit from CUPS for us in January.