UC4 GXE ORCHARD
Apple tree development, fruit and health status in contrasted environments
Partners: CSL (Lead), WBF, INRAE, IRTA, B3F
Objective
The use case dealing with the interaction between apple genetics and environment (UC4 GxE orchard) will aim at assessing the apple tree physiological and health status in contrasting environments with abiotic and biotic stress for an optimum management of fruit quality in these conditions. For this purpose, we will use a dedicated set of sensors that will be adapted to quantitatively monitor apple tree, fruit quality, growth and health status. The use case will use a multi-site experimental design called « the apple REFPOP » planted in 2016 following the same experimental design on five locations representing various biogeographical regions in Europe, including 534 genotypes. First attempts to phenotype this collection started already in the European project INVITE and will be intensified within PHENET. At the end of the project, we will have developed, validated and applied high throughput new generation monitoring devices linked to artificial intelligence and machine learning. They will be able to phenotype the apple tree status in contrasted environments and under water or pathogen stress and detect symptoms of disease and pest for an optimum management of fruit quality in these constrained conditions.
Expected results and services
Through PHENET we would like to further phenotype the refpop with innovative high throughput tools in order to get more powerful and deep information on the kinetics of physiological parameters and diseases including (internal) quality assessment of the refpop with the support of IT and IoT engineers and biostatisticians of PHENET. This will allow a better exploiting G x E X M interactions on apple.
