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ARS Home » Northeast Area » Geneva, New York » Plant Genetic Resources Unit (PGRU) » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #211608
Title: Investigation on the inheritance of strain specific resistance to Erwinia amylovora in an apple rootstock segregating population

Author
item Fazio, Gennaro
item WAN, YIZHEN - CORNELL UNIVERSITY
item RUSSO, NICOLE - CORNELL UNIVERSITY
item ALDWINCKLE, HERBERT - CORNELL UNIVERSITY

Submitted to: Fire Blight International Workshop
Publication Type: Proceedings
Publication Acceptance Date: 10/2/2007
Publication Date: 10/2/2008
Citation: Fazio, G., Wan, Y., Russo, N., Aldwinckle, H. 2008. Investigation on the inheritance of strain specific resistance to Erwinia amylovora in an apple rootstock segregating population. Acta Hort. 793:331-335.

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: E. amylovora is the causative agent of apple rootstock blight. This disease is becoming more important as more susceptible and yet desirable scion cultivars are utilized in production. Utilization of disease resistant apple rootstocks increases the survivability of young trees infected by fire blight. Previous experiments in our breeding program showed that some apple rootstocks that derive their resistance from Malus X Robusta cv. ‘Robusta 5’ show differential susceptibility to variably virulent strains of E. amylovora. The goal of this experiment was to expand knowledge about the inheritance of the differential susceptibility in a mapping progeny of 170 individuals of the cross between apple rootstock ‘Ottawa 3’ and ‘Robusta 5’. Buds from each individual in the segregating population were grafted onto seedling rootstocks and trained to a single actively growing shoot. The shoots were inoculated at the same time with two diversely virulent strains of E. amylovora (E2002a, and Ea273). The same segregating population is being used to construct a genetic map with the intention of mapping any quantitative trait loci involved in the resistance. The Geneva rootstock breeding program has developed several new rootstocks that exhibit disease resistance to E. amylovora but a few of them have shown some susceptibility to the most virulent strains. The results from this experiment will help us develop more durable resistance to rootstock fire blight.