Accelerated and cost-efficient development of apple varieties

The project in brief

The vision is apple breeding which yields new varieties more quickly and enables a forceful expansion of Swedish IP and organic farming. The goal is to achieve increased precision and a shorter development of hardy varieties with unique properties for sustainable and competitive production in more regions of Sweden, through a transition from phenotype- to genome-informed breeding.

The project will introduce genomic methods and techniques at all stages of variety breeding: characterisation of genetic resources, parental selection, design of breeding programmes and effective seedling selection. The Swedish apple breeding will therefore be based on the breeding by design concept, where genomic tools are used to effectively identify and utilise the genetic potential of the breeding material. The plant breeder is to be given the possibility of making genome-based decisions adapted to the specific programme.