Authored by Bill Dodd, D-Napa, SB-442 allows the California Department of Parks and Recreation to issue commercialization permits and set commercialization fees that can be used for the protection, conservation and restoration of resources of the state park system. The University of California, Davis, became a major driver for the new legislation after Johan Leveau, a professor in the Department of Plant Pathology, discovered a promising anti-fungal microbe in soils from the Jug Handle State Natural Reserve along the Mendocino Coast but found himself unable to translate his discovery into a public benefit because existing state law did not allow the commercialization of research materials from state parks.

Postdoctoral researchers, Drs. Emilyn Matsumura and Elizabeth Henry from Dr. Bryce Falk’s Lab in the Department of Plant Pathology, received funding from the USDA’s HLB Multi-Agency Coordination (MAC) program, which serves to coordinate and fund research for citrus HLB interventions. Their project will focus on developing tools to target the insect that transmits HLB. Currently, HLB has no cure, and effective intervention strategies have been difficult to find, primarily because the bacteria responsible for the disease cannot be manipulated in a laboratory, which make it difficult to better understand its biology.