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Vandalized strawberry plants and hot weather disrupted the first outdoor test of frost-fighting bacteria, but the company that invented it said preliminary results show success.
''This demonstrated that we can do the same thing in the field that we've done in the greenhouse,'' said John Bedbrook, director of research for Advanced Genetic Sciences Inc.
Plans for tests with the genetically altered Frostban on a fall strawberry crop and for fruit and nut trees next spring are under way, he said.
Frost damage costs American farmers about $1.6 billion a year.
Researchers said Frostban, a manmade form of common bacteria lacking the gene that allows frost to develop, reduced freezing an average of 2 degrees for a field of strawberries near Brentwood in Contra Costa County, about 50 miles northeast of San Francisco. Replanting Accomplished
Unseasonable hot weather damaged some of the plants and vandals uprooted some of them, but Mr. Bedbrook said the company was able to replant most of them.
The strawberry plants were taken from the field and subjected to freezing conditions in a laboratory.Although the freezing point is regarded as 32 degrees Fahrenheit, impurities in water generally keep it from freezing until the temperature drops to about 25 degrees, Mr. Bedbrook said. Frost can form a few degrees higher because of the presence of the commonly found pseudomanas syringae bacteria.
Mr. Bedbrook said the field test meant Frostban protected 60 percent of a crop that normally would have been destroyed because of the frost damage.
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