Awards issued prior to january 20, 2025, were funded under previous administrations and may not reflect the priorities and policies of the current administration.** huanglongbing disease (HLB)…

Awards issued prior to january 20, 2025, were funded under previous administrations and may not reflect the priorities and policies of the current administration.** huanglongbing disease (HLB) caused by the bacterium candidatus liberibacter asiaticus (CLAS) has killed millions of citrus trees and reduced average yield in florida by 50%, costing billions in lost revenue.crispr is the most powerful tool for rapid breeding of new HLB-resistant citrus trees, but has to be preceded by identifying specific gene-editing targets. The identification of target genes has been challenging because of poor understanding of the HLB pathogenesis mechanism and technical limitations of HLB-citrus, protein-interaction screening methods.a powerful new tool to address these limitations is turboid, an engineered biotin ligase that can label its proximal proteins when IT is expressed in cells. The proposed project addressed this opportunity by employing turboid-mediated proximity labeling to identify citrus proteins that interact with effector proteins that are critical for HLB CLAS infection.during phase I research, we produced a high-confidence list of CLAS SEC-dependent effector (SDE)-interacting citrus proteins by using turboid coupled with mass spectrometry. In phase II, we will use the discovered proteins as gene-editing targets for crispr precision breeding, to develop citrus varieties that disrupt the effector-citrus interactions, leading to genetic resistance to HLB.to that end, we will perform three objectives. The first is crispr-editing of promising SDE-interacting genes and generating non-transgenic crispr-edited citrus varieties. The second is testing crispr-edited plants for resistance to HLB through graft inoculation and proteomics analysis. The third is to commence field trials. We anticipate this project will develop non-GMO, HLB-resistant citrus trees that will be sold to citrus growers.