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Researchers work to identify DNA markers of re December 2016 Issue
blight resistance to step up breeding e orts.

Ross Courtney, Shannon Dininny // Dec 23, 2016 en español Home

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Jamie Coggins, a graduate student, and Bonnie Schonberg, a research technician, measure the e ects of re
blight on apple trees during a trial at Washington State University’s Columbia View research orchard near
Orondo, Washington, in June.

(Ross Courtney/Good Fruit Grower)

This past summer, a team of researchers armed with scissors walked through a North Central Washington apple
orchard and did the unthinkable: They inoculated 1,600 trees with re blight.

They’re not aiming to wipe out an orchard. Rather, they’re trying to identify the genes responsible for re blight
resistance in di erent apple cultivars and, ultimately, employ that information to develop new re blight-
resistant varieties.

Pear growers have long known about the challenges posed by re blight, caused by the bacterial pathogen
Erwinia amylovora, and it’s become more of an issue for apple orchardists as the number of new planted
varieties grows.

“It wasn’t a problem when we were growing Red Delicious, because Red Delicious is pretty well
resistant to re blight,” said Kate Evans, Washington State University apple breeder who is leading

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this re blight study. “But as other varieties are coming in and growers are planting them, it’s
becoming more of an issue.”
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Expanding the genotyping

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Researchers across the country have been working several years to establish genotypic information on di erent
cultivars of di erent crops. Called the RosBREED program, its aim was to improve and speed up breeding
programs by identifying the DNA markers for desirable fruit qualities.

The RosBREED 2 program aims to maximize the output from the rst program by adding disease resistance
markers to the search.

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Technicians and students analyze apple varieties for resistance to re blight at the Columbia View orchard in
Wenatchee.

(Ross Courtney/Good Fruit Grower)

For instance, Evans and her team already had gathered genetic and fruit quality information for 1,600 trees —
350 cultivars — in that research orchard. But if she could determine the re blight resistance of the trees, she
could get new information from the same trees.

“First, we might be able to identify some other sources of resistance we weren’t aware of,” she said. The trees
largely represent normal dessert apple germ-plasm, rather than more small fruited crabapple types, some of
which are resistant to re blight. “It would be great if we could identify some germplasm with some level of
resistance that we could then use in the breeding program.”
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The other potential gain: Because researchers already have genotypic information for these trees, they may be
able to identify some linked markers in their DNA associated with re blight resistance, which would enable
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them to use DNA screening to predict which trees in the breeding program will be resistant to re blight.

Taken together, newly identi ed resistance genes and development of DNA markers enable researchers to
pyramid multiple resistance genes, thereby improving the durability
en español Home of the resistance and the e ciency of the
breeding program.

The research

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Ooze drips from an apple tree a ected by re blight at the Columbia View orchard in Wenatchee.

(Ross Courtney/Good Fruit Grower)

Evans and her team couldn’t really inoculate her original research orchard, because the risk was too high that it
would destroy the trees. Instead, she had to establish a new planting to conduct the experiments.

“For a lot of diseases, like apple scab, the disease is usually widespread and uniform. It won’t kill
the tree. With re blight, it’s a much more sporadic disease and unless you do actually challenge
the tree with the pathogen, you don’t get reliable data on susceptibility,” said Jay Norelli, a plant
pathologist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s research station in Kearneysville, West Virginia.

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Norelli, who is leading the disease research for the RosBREED project and collaborating with Evans on this trial,
has been working to characterize the underlying basis of disease resistance in fruit trees and to develop novel
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control strategies for speci c diseases, including re blight.

Thus, the scissors to the trees. So far the trees have shown a range of responses in the rst year of study.
en español Home
“We had great infection,” she said with a laugh. “By seeing symptoms, you know there wasn’t a problem with
your inoculation, but we certainly saw some individuals that weren’t showing any symptoms either.”

The results have provided a great data set for the rst year, Evans said, and she intends to continue the work
next year.

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“You can’t do this kind of study on just one year’s data; it’s not informative enough,” she said. “There will be some
trees that won’t make it to next year, but for those that weren’t showing any symptoms, we really need to repeat
the process so that we’re con dent with the data set that we’re going to use going forward.” •

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Jay Norelli, a plant pathologist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture who is leading the disease
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for the RosBREED project, has been working to characterize the underlying basis of
disease resistance in fruit trees and to develop novel control strategies for speci c diseases,
including re blight.
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Speci cally, he and others are targeting speci c cultivars that they know are re blight tolerant and
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have fruit quality, including Splendor, a New Zealand cultivar that isn’t grown in the United
States and never really made it onto the commercial market due to storage issues. “It has excellent
avor though and has been used in many breeding programs,” he said.

Outside of the RosBREED project, Norelli and Kate Evans of Washington State University also have
identi ed some individuals of the wild progenitor of apple, Malus sieversii, that are highly resistant
to re blight.

“We are trying to do that directed genetic analysis by making crosses,” he said, which would
introduce into the breeding program a much higher level of resistance, but because it involves
breeding new varieties, rather than identifying resistance in existing varieties, “that approach will
take a lot longer.”

“Even when starting out with good cultivars, like Splendor, the development of a new cultivar for
fruit trees still takes a long time, and it takes a long time for it to be accepted by the industry,” he
said. “It’s a major undertaking.”

– by Shannon Dininny

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December 23rd, 2016 | Apples, December 2016 Issue, Diseases, Images, Pest Management, Research, Ross Courtney,
Shannon Dininny
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Apples // Diseases // Images // Pest Management // Research

About the Author: Shannon Dininny

Share Shannon Dininny is the managing editor of Good Fruit Grower. She writes articles for the print
magazine and website and plans and prepares editorial content. -- Follow the author: O ce (509)
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