Transgenic sweet orange plants expressing a dermaseptin coding sequence show reduced symptoms of citrus canker disease

NICOLÁS FURMAN, KEN KOBAYASHI, MARÍA CECILIA ZANEK, JAVIER CALCAGNO, MARÍA LAURA GARCIA AND ALEJANDRO MENTABERRY

JOURNAL OF BIOTECHNOLOGY

ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV

Lugar: Amsterdam; Año: 2013 p. 412 - 419

0168-1656

Citrus canker provoked by Xanthomonas axonopodis pv. citri is a bacterial disease causing severe losses in all citrus-producing areas around the world. Xanthomonas infection is considered an endemic disease in Northeast and Northwest Argentina, affecting as much as 10% of commercial citrus plantations. There is not known natural resistance neither in orange varieties nor in rootstocks used for grafting of commercial cultivars. To introduce resistance to this disease, plants of Pineapple sweet orange were transformed with a genetic construct allowing constitutive accumulation of dermaseptin. In comparison with non-transformed plants, transgenic plants showed symptom reduction levels of up to 50% in in planta assays performed under controlled conditions.