North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Mark Lee" <markl@nytec.com>]

Sam,
I read through this piece and picked up this:

"Transgenic plants produced normal, fertile flowers that set fruits
containing seeds. These traits were transmitted to the progeny,
resulting in trees with a generation time of one year from seed to seed.
Whereas LFY lines showed alterations in growth and development, AP1
plants were adult and fully normal."

They took floral genes from the Arabidopsis, a cabbage relative, and
inserted them into an orange.  Arabidopsis is known for its ability to
radiply produce seed.  Orange trees from seed take almost a decade to
produce fruit.  The orange trees with Arabidopsis genes only took one
year to produce fruit from the seedling stage.  A good thing for those
waiting for citrus seedlings to set fruit.  A bad thing for areas where
citrus seedlings are a weed.

-Mark Lee, Seattle