A biological medicine (and "Made in Italy") to defeat the kiwi's cancer, by Carlotta De Leo

<div style="text-align: justify;">After two years of trials the researchers of La Tuscia University (Viterbo, Latium) have developed and registered in Europe a specific phitopharmaceutical product to fight the Psa – "Pseudomonas syringae pv. actinidie", the bacterium that caused an international pandemic and 60 million euros of damages in one single Italian region, Latium.<br>"While we were searching for an eco-sustainable answer to the desease, our major competitor, New Zealand, authorised the use of antibiotics that did not give any concrete result…! says Giorgio Balestra, who coordinated the research at the Viterbo's University, where the Kiwi's bacteriosis was studied for 20 years. Italy is the first Kiwi's exporter at world level, and Latium is the leading region with an annual turnover of more than 100 million euros and more than 9,000 ha cultivated, out of wich 2,000 have already been affected by Psa. The bacterium was first reported during the 80ies in Asia, and then spread into Portugal, Spain, France, Switzerland, Turkey, Australia, New Zealand and Chile, causing severe damages everywhere. "We have developed different research lines, but in the end we have focused on the biological strategies of protection, studying another bacterium (a strain of Bacillus amyloliquefaciens) able to compete in a natural way, thus protecting above all the different phases of the actinidia's blooming when tackled by the Kiwi's cancer bacterium" says Balestra. The eco-compatible strategy adopted by La Tuscia researchers is surely healthier for environment than antibiotics experimented in New Zealand (forbidden in the EU), whose risk is to induce resistence to antibiotics of bacteria (pathogens or not) in orchards. The trial of the Balestra's group lasted more than two years, at the beginning in the lab, where the effectiveness of the natural antagonist to inhibit the Psa bacterium was tested, and then in the field, especially in Latium, where the reduction of the desease was considerable. The pharmaceutical product has been registered in Europe and Balestra is optimist: soon it will be possible to neutralise the severe kiwi's pathology.<br></div><br>“Corriere della Sera – Roma”, 9 April 2012, http://roma.corriere.it<br><br><br&gt;