Why Soilcea?

With the help of funding from the USDA and the NSF, Soilcea has developed citrus trees that are resistant to Huanglongbing (citrus greening disease) that is decimating the Florida citrus industry, having killed over 50 million trees, having cost the state over $10 billion in lost revenue, and having reduced citrus production from 300 million citrus boxes annually to 15 million boxes. Soilcea has exclusive commercial licenses to patents to HLB and canker target susceptibility genes and optimized CRISPR transformation methods for citrus developed by Dr. Nian Wang’s lab at the University of Florida.

CRISPR Precision Breeding

Soilcea is using CRISPR breeding to make small edits that make a tree susceptible to citrus greening and canker. Nature constantly makes changes to counter diseases and slowly adopts the beneficial change through natural selection. At Soilcea, we are advancing a natural process in time to save the Florida citrus industry. Soilcea's new varieties are showing significantly reduced disease levels and strong growth. The picture below shows a new Soilcea tree on the right compared to a normal control tree on the left that were planted at the same time.