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Professor’s quest for ‘jewels in the jungle’ helps move Montana State University to national research university and drives millions into local economy

"Was that a wow?"

Looking again at the lemons on Montana State University http://www.montana.edu/wwwvr/index.html professor Gary Strobel’s computer screen, "wow," is about the only word that could cover it.

It’s not every day that side-by-side comparisons of citrus could provoke such an exclamation, but then again, Strobel isn’t exactly presenting two ordinary crates of fruit. On one side is a box of lemons into which one of his discoveries – Muscador albus, a volatile, antibiotic-producing fungus – has been introduced. The lemons look perfect. The other container shows untreated lemons covered with a thick mold.

"You can put this organism into a bag, wet the bag, and throw the bag into a box of fruit when the fruit is put in from the field and shipped," Strobel explained. "The organism will grow and make its gases, and basically the gases will kill the organisms that are on the fruit, everything from the green mold on citrus to the rot that comes on peaches."

Strobel found the fungus in a cinnamon tree growing in the Central American rainforest in 1997. After years of work in the lab, Strobel was awarded a U.S. government patent for M. Albus and its biological activities in May.

Shortly thereafter, the Belgrade company Phillips Environmental Products http://www.thepett.com/ announced that it will feature the fungus in its product line, using the white, smelly endophyte to kill both the smell and harmful bacteria in human waste. Meanwhile, an agricultural biotech company in California, AgraQuest, is developing the natural fungicide from M. Albus and is awaiting approval from the Environmental Protection Agency to create products to treat fruits and vegetables.

By Nicole Rosenleaf Ritter

Full Story: http://bozemandailychronicle.com/articles/2005/09/11/business/lead.txt

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