Whole tree vs. rootstock or scion tolerance to HLB

Whole tree vs. rootstock or scion tolerance to HLB

Report Date: 03/30/2021
Project: 19-009   Year: 2021
Category: Horticultural & Management
Author: Evan Johnson
Sponsor: Citrus Research and Development Foundation

Propagation of experimental trees proved more difficult than anticipated.  We have transplanted the trees for the first repitition into split root rhizotrons and are preparing for HLB inoculation and sampling.  The postdocs in Drs. Johnson and Wang’s labs have coordinated and done test runs of sampling procedures for RNA and metabolite samples, which will begin 2 weeks after inoculations.   While we had very high success rate for Valencia on Swingle, all other combinations that included either Sugarbelle or UFR-4 had lower than expected success rates and the trees continue to underperform compared to the Val/Swingle.  Although we thought we had enough plant material for both experiments vigorously growing, we have had some of the combinations struggle recently.  We are contacting nurseries to see if they can provide us with grafted trees for the 2nd rep by next spring.          


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