During the period of July, August, and September, 2017, Dr. McNellis submitted a full proposal to the USDA Citrus Specialty Crop program to expand and continue the existing project funded by CRDF, and this full grant proposal was submitted to the USDA on August 18, 2017. This project would be a collaboration between Dr. McNellis and Drs. Ozgur Batuman, Liliana Cano, and Rhuanito Ferrarezi. They have the expertise to do CLas infections and PCR-based quantification of CLas in plant tissues. In addition, Dr. McNellis has been working with Dr. Catherine Hatcher of the CRDF on a pre-proposal for the field testing and greenhouse testing for HLB resistance of the trees produced through this project, in anticipation that the current project will be concluded on December 31, 2017. Dr. McNellis’ lab also continued quantitative analysis of anti-HLB antibody protein expression in the transgenic lines (the FT-scFv fusion protein) by western blotting. It will be the objective and intention of the renewal project to test HLB resistance or tolerance status of ungrafted and grafted trees with the transgenic genotype.