FRENCH APPLE BREEDING PROGRAM: A NEW PARTNERSHIP BETWEEN INRA AND THE NURSERYMEN OF NOVADI

The INRA Angers apple breeding program started in 1960 and is concerned with dessert and processing fruit. The main objective is to combine high fruit quality with disease and pest resistance and to achieve high and regular cropping. Each year, 10,000 to 20,000 seedlings are planted and inoculated in a greenhouse with a mixture of scab strains collected in INRA’s orchards. The resistant seedlings are then planted in nursery condition for mildew assessment. In 1996, a new collaboration started with the French group of nurserymen NOVADI. After mildew tests, budwood of the scab resistant and mildew tolerant trees are delivered to the nurserymen to be grafted and trees are planted in 6 nurseries sites where fruit evaluation is performed. The tree distribution between the sites follows a complex experimental design including the sharing of progenies between the sites and the duplication of all the hybrids in French northern and southern sites. First fruits of this new design have been tested in 2000: some hybrids seem already promising. This new design allows us to estimate genetic parameters on the assessed fruit traits; some preliminary genetic results are presented.

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