2003-04-16 | permalink

Brazil tests GM orange tree against »sudden death«

A Brazilian genome scientist says his firm is close to marketing genetically modified orange trees that could save the world’s largest orange crop from destruction by ”sudden death” disease. The disease, now believed to be a human-caused, virulent mutation of an older plague that wiped out Brazil’s orchards in the 1950s, has surfaced across an area holding about 22 million trees in Brazil’s main orange state of Sao Paulo. The idea is to create a tree that is immune to the citrus tristeza virus (CTV) and sudden death, as if we were creating a human into which the cold virus could not enter and mutate,” Fernando Reinach, the chief executive officer of Allelyx, told Reuters in a phone interview.

• Reuters: Brazil tests GM orange tree against »sudden death«