HIDRAS: High-quality disease resistant apples for a sustainable agriculture

• Research unit: EU RFP
• Project number: 02.0053

Key words (English)

Agriculture; Economic Aspects; Environmental Protection; Life Sciences; Resources of the Sea; Fisheries

Alternative project number (English)

EU project number: QLK5-CT-2002-01492

Research programs (English)

EU-programme: 5. Frame Research Programme - 1.1.5 Sustainable agriculture, fisheries and forestry

Short description (English)

See abstract

Further information (English)

Full name of research-institution/enterprise:
ETH Zürich
Institut für Integrative Biologie (IBZ)
Pflanzenpathologie

Abstract (English)

European apple production needs up to 20 fungicide sprays per year to cope with pathogens. All resistant varieties have poor fruit quality thus they are not well accepted by growers and consumers. HiDRAS aims at providing tools to combine resistance with fruit quality, leading to the diffusion of new resistant cultivars and to a remarkable reduction in fungicide use. In HiDRAS storability of apple fruit is studied to increase the competitiveness of European apples towards Southern Hemisphere countries. HiDRAS will provide the identification of alleles and linked genetic markers for the fruit traits that determine the success of cultivars. Innovative statistic and genetic approaches based on the exploitation of pedigrees of several Western and Eastern European breeding germplasm will be adopted. A well-concerted multidisciplinary approach including apple breeding, genetics, molecular biology, statistics and bio informatics will ensure the achievement of the results.

References in databases (English)

Swiss Database: Euro-DB of the
State Secretariat for Education and Research
Hallwylstrasse 4
CH-3003 Berne, Switzerland
Tel. [phone]
Swiss Project-Number: 02.0053