Importance of robust varieties for sustainable organic pome fruit growing in the future (BIOFRUITNET Practice Abstract)

Summary

A reduced need for contentious inputs further enhances the sustainability of organic fruit growing and reduces labour and costs for the farm. This offers possibilities for new investments in other areas.
Practical recommendation
Shift your variety spectrum to more resistant varieties:
• Professional fruit growing often means highly intensive systems. Growing sensitive varieties results in a high need for (sometimes contentious) inputs to ensure healthy orchards and stable, profitable yields. This means expensive, time-consuming and less sustainable economic systems.
Support Consumer education and new marketing concepts:
• The choice of varieties is highly connected to consumer and market demand and not easy to shift. Support better consumer education in terms of appreciation and acceptance of defects that do not affect the internal quality, such as optical shell defects (an apple must not look perfect!)
• Work together with your bundlers and marketers to increase acceptance and to change the variety spectrum on the market to robust varieties in the medium and long term.
Support regional/ national organic breeding activities & associations:
Most of the currently available resistant varieties in pome fruits rely on single resistance genes, which slowly but steadily start to break down for various reasons:
• Low genetic diversity of the varieties because of a high incest rate from a narrow breeding pedigree in the past
• Higher selection pressure and adapting races of patogenic fungi due to few, broadly grown, large-scale varieties
• Better climatic conditions for fungi and pests caused by climate change in many regions