Citrus Pathology Lab

Congratulations on the successful PhD defense and welcome as post-doctoral researcher! Kellee’s PhD Research was focuswed on the biological control of the Asian Citrus Psyllid, vector of the devastating Citrus Greening pathogen. During her graduate program, Kellee published two first-author papers “The Detection and Surveillance of Asian Citrus Psyllid (Diaphorinacitri)—Associated Viruses in Florida Citrus Groves” and “Partial Genome Sequence of a Novel Reo-Like Virus Detecte

Citrus pathology and Citrus physiology (Professor Ute Albrecht's) lab members participated in the harvesting and juicing of grapefruits from the Duncan trial for the analysis of _____

Southwest Florida WINK News visits Batuman Lab to report: “UF Researchers receive federal funding to fight citrus greening”. Dr. Batuman discusses projects that aim to combat the effects of citrus greening by creating an inter-stalk graft method using Fingerlimes, fruits known to have more resistance and peptides that work against severe disease development.

During the Fall of 2021, Salih Yilmaz became the Vice President of Plant Pathology Graduate Student Organization and the Treasurer of the Southwest Florida Research and Education Center Graduate Student Organization.

Mid-August 2021 marked the successful completion of Marissa Penquiney’s summer internship at the Citrus pathology lab. Marissa is going into her senior year at Ave Maria University, majoring in biology, and interested in pursuing a graduate degree in plant pathology. She was assisting Dr. Sanju Kunwar in developing assays for testing novel therapeutics against citrus canker and also learned molecular biology skills in plant pathogen diagnostics with Kseniya Chumachenko.

All members of the Batuman Lab and much of Dewdney lab (from Citrus Research and Education center in Lake Alfred, FL) participated in the week-long disease scouting and rating process. This collective effort covered thousands of trees and prepared the blueprint for pesticide trial tree selection

Dr. Ozgur Batuman, UF-IFAS. In this talk, Ozgur reminds growers to continue paying attention to other pathogens that can attack already HLB-weakened trees. Phytophthora or leprosis each can substantially reduce productivity of a citrus tree but when they are co-infecting, it can be fatal. Also, some control measures may not be effective anymore due to HLB-induced complications. To see the entire presentation, click on the PDF link below: