About Us
Texas A&M University- Kingsville Citrus Center Biotechnology Laboratory is part of a research complex comprised by The Texas A&M Agricultural Experiment Station, The Kika de la Garza Subtropical Research Center and the Citrus Center.
We are located in a 40 acres area and have an additional 240 acres research farm 5 miles south of our facility. The biotechnology laboratory focuses on research towards the development of new improved citrus cultivars using traditional techniques, and high tech molecular tools.
We are studying the expression of cold responsive genes in a cold hardy and in a cold sensitive citrus species with the objective of better understand the cold acclimation process in citrus. Furthermore, we are modifying a pathway related to Calcium signaling to develop of a broad spectrum disease resistance for citrus. Other research projects are described elsewhere in the webpage.
We maintain a very successful hands-on undergraduate research internship program funded by the USDA- Hispanic-Serving Institution Education Grants Program (HSI). We have provided so far internships for more than 60 undergraduate students and were able to channel more than 25 to graduate studies. Ten students from the program are at the Ph.D. level. The most exciting part is that more than 95% of the students are Hispanics and the first in the family to go to college.