Crop Type: Tree crop
Breeding system: Predominantly allogamous
he domesticated apple (Malus domestica Borkh.) belongs to the family of Rosaceae and is the main fruit crop of the temperate regions of the world in terms of production levels (FAOSTAT 2019). Apple also occupies a relevant position in folklore, culture and art (Juniper and Mabberley 2006). All over the world are popular because of their taste, nutritional properties, storability and convenience of use. Apple is widely used to produce processed products such as apple-based beverages (apple juice, ciders, etc.) and desserts.
The apple originated in Central Asia, however its wild relatives together with landraces, distributed across temperate Eurasia and growing in diverse habitats, represent a potentially useful source of diversity for apple breeding.
Humans have been exploiting, selecting and transporting apples by centuries even before the advent of the cultivated apple. Much of the diversity present in domesticated apples is currently maintained in ex situ germplasm repositories (in tree collections or in vitro within particular genebank facilities) and amateur collection, including a broad spectrum of selection and propagation of ‘superior’ types derived from open-pollination progenies (Cornille et al. 2014). In fact, apple like most other fruit tree crops, is propagated by grafting onto rootstocks (van de Weg et al. 2017), and despite the wide diversity that is potentially available, apple production currently relies on the cultivation of few ornamental and edible cultivars grafted onto less than a dozen different clonal rootstocks, under high input management systems (Cornille et al. 2014).
References- Cornille A, Giraud T, Smulders MJM, et al (2014) The domestication and evolutionary ecology of apples. Trends Genet 30:57–65. doi: 10.1016/j.tig.2013.10.002
- FAOSTAT (2019) Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, FAOSTAT database.
- Juniper BE, Mabberley DJ (2006) The story of the Apple. Imber Press
- van de Weg E, Di Pierro EA, Micheletti D, et al (2017) High-quality de novo assembly of the apple genome and methylome dynamics of early fruit development. Nat Genet 49:1099–1106. doi: 10.1038/ng.3886