Ongoing climatic changes are suspected to lead to unappropriated blooming periods, lacks of pollination, and due to strong genotype x environment interactions to irregular cropping that may provoke changes in cultivation areas or in appropriate cultivar for a given zone. Moreover, while orchards are still more and more dense, societal demand leads to orientate new research towards new agronomic practices such as Agro-Ecology and towards the selection of new varieties with high cropping value and adapted to their environment, especially regarding their floral phenology.

In this context, AFEF team study and model the genetic determinisms of key traits that are challenging for selecting innovative material: phenology, cropping regularity, tree architecture.