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Citrus Greening Research Project Chief Has Solid Agenda
Lakeland Ledger – July 12, 2008
LAKELAND | The Florida Citrus Production Research Advisory Council has hired Thomas Turpen to guide a $20 million research push to control citrus greening, a fatal bacterial disease, through Florida’s citrus groves. Growers consider greening the top threat to citrus’ future.
A particular concern is the time it takes the state to get the money to researchers once the council approves their projects. That has taken six months or more in the past, which doesn’t suit the growers’ urgency to find solutions to the greening problem.
“When you’ve got a comet coming at you, we can’t deal with six-month windows,” said Jerry Newlin, vice president of the Citrus Production Division at Orange-Co LP, an Arcadia-based grower, and a council member.
The deadline for submitting initial research proposals comes Monday, and the council has already received hundreds from across the globe, Turpen said. Researchers will have until Sept. 5 to submit a final proposal based on the council’s feedback, and final awards will be made Oct. 31.
The council hopes the winning projects can begin by Nov. 21. Turpen has an 18-month, $225,000 contract with the council.
Turpen is a founder and principal in Technology Innovation Group Inc., a technology transfer and innovation management firm in Austin, Texas. He has more than 25 years of experience in health care and agricultural biotechnology, including work as a senior executive and researcher for startups and Fortune 500 companies. He holds a doctorate in plant pathology from the University of California.
Turpen spoke to The Ledger on greening research and his role
Q. What experience do you have working on projects of the size and impact similar to the $20 million greening effort?
A. Technology Innovation Group specializes in public-private partnerships. We have direct experience with commercialization projects of this magnitude in the areas of infectious disease and health care, for example. That involved multiple research institutions and private capital investments.
We’ve also worked internationally to promote the organization and development of technology business incubators through nonprofit and government collaborations, for example, in South Africa, Jordan and in the U.S.
Q. Your job has been compared to Gen. Leslie Groves, a tough bureaucratic infighter who led the Manhattan Project to a successful conclusion. What kinds of bureaucratic obstacles do such projects face?
A. In the citrus greening case, there’s a strong singular will already expressed by the key stakeholders in Florida to address this problem. Therefore, the more challenging part has already been overcome.
The issue now is to channel synergy in a productive manner, and the state of Florida and the citrus industry have created an approach that will harness the best scientific minds to focus on possible solutions to mitigate the impact of greening disease.
Q. How can you help get around those obstacles?
A. To start with, the state’s funding a research program, and in alliance with the citrus industry has established a structure for soliciting, reviewing, recommending and funding research projects that specifically address multiple aspects of the greening disease. We call this program the Florida Citrus Advanced Technology Program.
This process is structured to be transparent, and the proposals for research programs will be technically evaluated by panels organized by the National Academy of Sciences. This will result in funding for the most promising areas of research to address greening disease.
(On getting money to researchers within a month after approval of their proposals.) We’re going to work on that now in advance of this fall’s funding cycle. We will want to have streamlined understandings with primary institutions that we expect will be funded. It’s possible by working on it in advance, which is what we’re doing now.
Q. What kinds of research areas will get a high priority in this coming round of research funding?
A. Our priorities have been set in an international meeting of experts across some 36 topics that is publicly available at our Web site at www.fcprac.com.
These 36 topics include the disease vector – the insect, the Asian citrus psyllid – understanding its biology and transmission of the bacterial pathogen. We want as a very high priority that genome sequence so we have potential new targets for intervention.
Finally there’s a major effort to have efficient methods and tools to introduce new resistance genes into citrus.
Q. Florida citrus growers are looking for immediate help from this research to combat greening in their groves. What can you tell them about the prospects for immediate help?
A. Personally I’m most encouraged by the prospects for innovation and new methods of psyllid control in the near term. That’s really the most likely area to have an immediate impact, and I think it’s a really necessary area early on. It’s in the area of integrated pest management around manipulation of psyllid behavior through attractants, repellents and pheromones (a chemical that triggers a natural behavioral).
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