Abstract
Huanglongbing is causing economic devastation to the citrus industry in Florida, and threatens the industry everywhere the bacterial pathogens in the Candidatus Liberibacter genus and their insect vectors are found. Bacteria in the genus cannot be cultured and no durable strategy is available for growers to control plant infection or pathogen transmission. However, scientists and grape growers were once in a comparable situation after the emergence of Pierce’s disease, which is caused by Xylella fastidiosa and spread by its hemipteran insect vector. Proactive quarantine and vector control measures coupled with interdisciplinary data-driven science established control of this devastating disease and pushed the frontiers of knowledge in the plant pathology and vector biology fields. Our review highlights the successful strategies used to understand and control X. fastidiosa and their potential applicability to the liberibacters associated with citrus greening, with a focus on the interactions between bacterial pathogen and insect vector. By placing the study of Candidatus Liberibacter spp. within the current and historical context of another fastidious emergent plant pathogen, future basic and applied research to develop control strategies can be prioritized.
Highlights
Introduction and Historical ContextHuanglongbing (HLB) is the most serious disease of citrus and is causing economic devastation in Florida
This study broadly shows that perturbance of cell-to-cell communication may be an effective bacterial control strategy
In the case of Pierce’s disease, a rapid coordinated response contained the spread of X. fastidiosa in California
Summary
Huanglongbing (HLB) is the most serious disease of citrus and is causing economic devastation in Florida. In the 1960s, HLB was thought to be caused by Citrus tristeza virus [2]. X. fastidiosa has since been observed to cause disease in a wide range of plant hosts [18,19,22,23,24]. The deluge of information about the pathogen, insect vector, and host tolerances was successfully leveraged for control of Pierce’s disease in grape using a multi-pronged management strategy [25]. Rapid response was taken after detection of Pierce’s disease or the GWSS and involved visual surveys and additional monitoring. This review focuses on the key data and experimental workflows that led to our current understanding and control of Pierce’s disease, and how these approaches can be applied to the study and eventual control of HLB. Generalist pathogen, in which addition of a small number of genes or plasmids can alter host specificity
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