Description

Environmental signals such as winter and spring temperatures that control dormancy and the growth / flowering cycles of fruit trees are altered by climate change, threatening crop production. However, our ability to produce new cultivars is limited by our lack of knowledge about the underlying mechanisms and their genetic variation in collections of diversity. The FruitFlow project brings together an international consortium of five research centers and three companies to address these questions about two important fruit species: apple and peach. FRUITFLOW (1) will develop tools for predicting apple and peach phenology using statistical and artificial intelligence methods applied to high throughput phenotyping data, (2) will identify and characterize natural substances to adapt the period of flowering fruit trees and (3) identify favorable alleles and molecular markers to assist breeding programs.