Predicting and tuning seasonal responses of apple and peach to improve orchard yield and climate change resilience

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Seasonal patterns of growth and flowering are crucial for successful fruit production and yield. During autumn and early winter, buds and apices of fruit trees become dormant in response to low temperatures and short days. This dormancy is overcome by longer exposure to cold, allowing growth to resume in spring. Environmental cues such as winter and spring temperatures that control these cycles are altered with climate change threatening yield. However, our ability to breed new tree cultivars is hampered by our lack of knowledge of the molecular and genetic mechanisms underlying these economically important environmental responses. The FruitFlow project brings together an international consortium of five academic and three commercial partners to address these issues for two important perennial crops: apple and peach. We will develop novel technologies for predicting and promoting flower and fruit production. First, we will acquire data on the seasonal behavior of diverse panels of apple and peach varieties. Climatic conditions at the growing sites will be recorded daily while regular aerial images will be acquired with Unmanned Aerial Vehicles together with Near InfraRed Spectroscopy measurements on leaves and buds. Computational modeling approaches will be used to predict the behavior of cultivars in different environments. Second, we will identify genetic associations between the behavior of apple and peach cultivars and polymorphisms in their genomes using existing panels of diverse cultivars of each species. Third, the chemical content of apple and peach buds will be analyzed between December and February to identify small molecules whose appearance correlates with different stages of the dormancy cycle. Proteins that interact with these molecules will then be identified by co-precipitation and computational methods. Fourth, the functions of proteins identified as interacting with small molecules or from the association studies will be tested by reverse genetics or transgenic approaches. Due to the difficulty of generating transgenic apple and peach plants and their long generation time, these experiments will be performed using plant models such as poplar trees and the perennial herbaceous model Arabis alpina. For both of these species rapid transformation methods have been generated. The function of apple and peach genes will be tested in these model species by gain and loss of function approaches. Fifth, chemicals identified as accumulating at different stages of the dormancy process will be tested for their capacity to stimulate bud break or flowering of apple and peach by direct application. Thus, FruitFlow will contribute to solving an important current problem in European Agriculture by bringing together an international, multidisciplinary consortium to produce fundamental knowledge on bud dormancy and budbreak in fruit trees and to test its significance under field conditions.