Grove-First: A Generalizable Framework to Evaluate Translational Solutions to Citrus Greening and Other Perennial Crop Diseases
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Citrus greening disease, also known as huanglongbing (HLB), is the most serious vector-borne bacterial disease of citrus worldwide and an emblematic case of perennial crop decline caused by insect vector-borne disease. There is an immediate global need to provide the citrus industry with relief from HLB and a return to profitable citrus production. Discovery of HLB treatments typically involve various laboratory-based assays, which then advance to greenhouse and eventually field testing in a workflow that takes multiple years. We present a field-forward experimental framework, "Grove-First," that reverses the traditional laboratory-to-field pipeline by prioritizing outcome-based screening. Grove-First rapidly screens and validates treatments with regulatory-friendly profiles in commercial citrus groves using trunk injection to select treatments that improve tree health and fruit yield over the course of a single growing season. The Grove-First framework represents a generalizable systems approach for translational agricultural research, applicable to perennial crops where disease impact, long development timelines, and real-world variability demand in-field, outcome-based screening. Using this framework, we identified candidate treatments with effects comparable to or better than the standard oxytetracycline on visual tree-health and/or yield indices in an initial screen of HLB-positive 8-year-old 'Valencia' sweet orange trees. Expanded trials in commercial citrus groves allowed us to validate the initial screening results at other locations and in other citrus varieties. Grove-First rapidly accelerated the identification and large-scale field testing of HLB therapies, some of which are available for growers to use immediately and others that require further field testing and/or regulatory actions.
Source: Plant Disease
Authors: Michelle L. Heck, Nicholas R. Larson, Guilherme Locatelli, Ellen F. Cochrane, Samuel Coradetti, Lukas Hallman, Lynn Johnson, W. Cody Estes, Ariana Makar, Nursena Demirden, Marco Pitino, Robert G. Shatters, Robert C. Adair, Frank Giles, John-Paul Fox, Douglas Stuehler, Joanne Hodge, James Hoffman, Victoria Blake, Loushendy Ulysse, Lisvet Ramirez-Barrera, Riley McKenna, Luke Thompson, Lucy Bennett, Adriana Larrea-Sarmiento, Alejandro Olmedo-Velarde, Samantha Barkee, Chase Weeks-Purdy, Flavia Zambon, Ketan Shende, Lorenzo Rossi, Tom D’Elia, Mark A. Ritenour, Brian T. Scully, Randall P. Niedz
Institutions: Agricultural Research Service, United States Department of Agriculture, Cornell University, Robert W. Holley Center for Agriculture & Health, U.S. Horticultural Research Laboratory, University of Florida, Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, New York State College of Agriculture & Life Sciences, Groupe de Recherche en Electrotechnique et Automatique du Havre, Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education, Indian River State College, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, Iowa State University
Language: English
Subfield: Plant Science
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W4415628806