Intragenesis is an important alternative to transgenesis to produce modified plants 27 containing native DNA only. A key point to develop such a strategy is the availability of 28 regulatory sequences controlling the expression of the gene of interest. With the aim of 29 finding apple gene promoters either inducible by the fire blight pathogen Erwi...
In 2010, a major scientific milestone was achieved for tree fruit crops: publication of the first draft whole genome sequence (WGS) for apple (Malus domestica). This WGS, v1.0, was valuable as the initial reference for sequence information, fine mapping, gene discovery, variant discovery, and tool development. A new, high quality apple WGS, GDDH13 ...
Under natural growth conditions, plants experience various and repetitive biotic and abiotic stresses. Salicylic acid (SA) is a key phytohormone involved in the response to biotic challenges. Application of synthetic SA analogues can efficiently prime defense responses, and leads to improved pathogen resistance. Because SA analogues can result in l...
Plants respond to drought by adjusting different growth and developmental processes. This study investigated the impact of a summer water deficit on shoot growth dynamics, comparatively in three apple cultivars, in their second and third year of growth. Trees were differentially irrigated to induce water stress (WS) or well - watered conditions (WW...
To cope with increasing water scarcity, breeding programs targeting for more efficient crop water use are crucial. This requires comprehensive knowledge of plant responses to drought, including the regulation of water status (by stomatal closure) and water - use efficiency (the ratio of carbon gain to water use). These questions have been scarcely ...
Background: Tracking newly emergent virulent populations in agroecosystems provides an opportunity to increase our understanding of the co-evolution dynamics of pathogens and their hosts. On the one hand host plants exert selective pressure on pathogen populations, thus dividing them into subpopulations of different virulence, while on the other ha...
Regulated deficit irrigation, which is a common practice to cope with water scarcity, can impact plant-aphid interactions, and possibly lead to a reduction in the use of pesticides. To test the possible effect of water restriction on the apple tree-rosy apple aphid (Malus domestica-Dysaphis plantaginea) system, we performed a factorial experiment w...
Consumers appreciate ‘Amasya’, the most important local apple cultivar of Turkey, but not producers because of several production constraints that complicate management of the cultivar (e.g., low yield, biennial bearing, early blooming and poor fruit skin colouring). Based on this background, ‘Amasya’ scions were irradiated to obtain mutants. Irrad...
Published in The New phytologist
Plants exhibit dependences between shoot growth and branching that generate highly structured patterns. The characterization of the patterning mechanism is still an open issue because of the developmental processes involved with both succession of events (e.g. internode elongation, axillary shoot initiation and elongation) and complex dependences a...
