On July 4th, Prof. Leandro Peña , a Spanish expert in citrus genetic engineering, was invited by Dr. Yuepeng Han to make a presentation entitled “Genetic Engineering of Citrus: improvements on development and fruit quality” at Wuhan Botanical Garden.

Prof. Leandro Peña illustrated in detail how to optimize citrus transform system, particularly transform experiments taking explants of mature citrus as research object, which made the attended teachers and students have better understanding on citrus transform system. He claimed that his lab had conducted genetic transfer on some important genes and got a lot of transgene citrus species. After analysis on these transgene materials, he draw a conclusion that the application of transgene technology played an important role in shortening the infancy period and enhancing the anti-disease ability of the species. After the report, Prof. Peña had a discussion with the report participants. This report was well appraised by all the attended teachers and students.

Prof. Leandro Peña is currently a Principal Investigator in ValenciaInstituteof Agriculture as well as a member ofPlant Cell Reporteditorial board. As a well-known genetic engineering expert in citrus, he published more than 30 papers as first author or correspondence author in journals such asNature Biotechnology, Plant Physiology, Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions, J Exp Bot, Theor Appl Genet, Plant Molecular Biology, Transgenic Research, Plant Cell Reports, Mol Brees and Tree Physiol.

Dr. Yuepeng Han and Prof. Leandro Peña in nice conversation(Image by ZHOU Ying)