Breeding high quality disease resistant apple varieties

Abstract: Breeding for high quality apples combined with excellent agronomic features and durable disease resistance is a highly relevant approach for sustainable production systems. This includes multi-disease resistance against the most important apple problems: scab (Venturia inaequalis), powdery mildew (Podosphaera leucotricha) and fire blight (Erwinia amylovora). A promising strategy to develop apple cultivars with durable multi-disease resistance is the pyramiding of major genes. The presence of pyramided resistance can be detected by marker-assisted selection. For many known apple scab resistance genes, molecular markers are available. We focus on new achievements for breeding scab and mildew resistant and fire blight tolerant apple cultivars.