Researchers Use Flower Power In Greening Fight

By Growing Produce Staff|April 26, 2010

A team of scientists from the USDA-Agricultural Research Service (ARS) and the University of Florida’s Indian River Research and Education Center (IRREC) have turned an ornamental plant into a tool for combating a bacterial disease that threatens the world’s citrus crop.

Periwinkle (Catharanthus roseus) has proved to be an effective screening tool for treatments to control Huanglongbing (HLB), according to Yong-Ping Duan of the ARS U.S. Horticultural Research Laboratory (USHRL) in Fort Pierce, FL.

Duan and his colleagues have found that periwinkle performs well as a stand-in for citrus, becoming quickly infected with HLB bacterium and responding well to antibiotic compounds tested to reduce infection. Duan’s colleagues included William W. Turechek and Ed Stover, both at USHRL, and Mu- Qing Zhang, Lijuan Zhou and Charles A. Powell of IRREC.

The researchers used HLB-infected lemon trees to infect periwinkle plants and then ran greenhouse experiments to find the optimal nutrient and soil treatments for regenerating periwinkle with high infection rates. They also soaked infected periwinkle cuttings in different chemical compounds and found that two of them performed well as potential HLB treatments.

Published results from the team’s efforts can be found in the scientific journal Phytopathology. Duan emphasized that the results are limited to greenhouse settings and that the chemical compounds, penicillin G sodium and biocide 2,2-dibromo-3-nitrilopropionamide (DBNPA), must still be evaluated in field trials and approved for use by regulatory agencies before commercial use is possible.