No abstract

Citrus somatic hybridization and cybridization via protoplast fusion has become an integral part of citrus variety improvement programs worldwide. Citrus somatic hybrid plants have been regenerated from more than 200 parental combinations, and several cybrid combinations have also been produced. Applications of somatic hybridization to citrus scion improvement include the production of quality tetraploid breeding parents that can be used in interploid crosses to generate seedless triploids, and the direct production of triploids by haploid + diploid fusion. Applications of somatic hybridization to citrus rootstock improvement include the production of allotetraploid hybrids that combine complementary diploid rootstocks, and to combine citrus with sexually incompatible or difficult to hybridize genera that possess traits of interest for germplasm expansion. A few somatic hybrid tetraploid breeding parents have flowered, are fertile, and are being used as pollen parents to generate triploids. Several allotetraploid somatic hybrid rootstocks are performing well in commercial field trials, and show great promise for tree size control. Seed trees of most of these somatic hybrid rootstocks are producing adequate nucellar seed for standard propagation. Somatic hybridization is expected to have a positive impact on citrus cultivar improvement efforts.

Commercial sweet orange cultivars lack resistance to Huanglongbing (HLB), a serious phloem limited bacterial disease that is usually fatal. In order to develop sustained disease resistance to HLB, transgenic sweet orange cultivars ‘Hamlin’ and ‘Valencia’ expressing an Arabidopsis thaliana NPR1 gene under the control of a constitutive CaMV 35S promoter or a phloem specific Arabidopsis SUC2 (AtSUC2) promoter were produced. Overexpression of AtNPR1 resulted in trees with normal phenotypes that exhibited enhanced resistance to HLB. Phloem specific expression of NPR1 was equally effective for enhancing disease resistance. Transgenic trees exhibited reduced diseased severity and a few lines remained disease-free even after 36 months of planting in a high-disease pressure field site. Expression of the NPR1 gene induced expression of several native genes involved in the plant defense signaling pathways. The AtNPR1 gene being plant derived can serve as a component for the development of an all plant T-DNA derived consumer friendly GM tree.