THE GENETIC COLLECTION OF THE RSRI FCS USE EFFICIENCY IN APPLE BREEDING

Abstract

The results of the long-term work on using the VNIISPK genetic collection of apple in breeding are summed up. It is shown that ‘Papirovka tetraploid’, Wealthy tetraploid’, ‘Redfree’, ‘McIntosh’, ‘Antonovka Krasnobochka’, ‘Antonovka Obyknovennaya’, ‘Prima’, ‘Wealthy’, ‘Bessemyanka Michurinskaya’ as well as Seedling 814 (Vf) and Seedling SR 0523 (Vm) proved to be the most productive parents in the genetic collection. In all, from the Institute collection (900 accessions) involving only 41 genotype forms there have been created 77 new apple cultivars, 53 of which are included in the State Register. Thirty eight best new cultivars developed on the bassis of using the genetic collection are briefly described. It is noted that the genetic diversity of the collection has been used insufficienly yet. The task of developing cultivars combining three positive qualties in their genomes, i.e. scab immunity + triploidy + columnar habit, is set.