FORTIPHYTE INC — Department of Agriculture SBIR Phase I: 8.2

Description

Bacterial Spot is a major disease issue for tomato cultivation in the United States and around theworld particularly in warm and humid environments. There are currently no commercialvarieties of tomatoes with resistance to this disease and farmers typically rely on expensive andonly partially effective chemical controls. We recently identified several immune receptor genesinvolved in resistance to Xanthomonas the causative bacterial pathogen of this disease. So farwe demonstrated that one of these genes named Roq1 confers resistance to Xanthomonas whenexpressed in tomato. We believe two additional genes named Zar1 and Jim2 will also conferresistance to this pathogen.In the proposed work Zar1 and Jim2 will be expressed in tomato to determine if these genes aresufficient to confer resistance to Xanthomonas. To facilitate commercialization we will use aprecise gene delivery system to generate tomato lines with only the desired resistance traits.These "cisgenic" lines won't have no antibiotic resistance makers 35S promoters T-DNAborders or other foreign DNA elements thereby reducing regulatory and market acceptanceconcerns. In addition to Bacterial Spot we recently showed that Roq1 can confer resistance toBacterial Speck caused by Pseudomonas and we have preliminary data indicated that these traitswill work against some strains of Ralstonia solanacearum another important pathogen of tomato.This work will demonstrate the efficacy of these traits and will result in the generation of tomatovariety with durable resistance to Xanthomonas Pseudomonas and Ralstonia.