Assessment of diversity in a Hungarian apple gene bank using morphological markers

Abstract

The world’s apple production is based on only a few dozen cultivars. In countries with an advanced food culture and growing environmental awareness, the demand for bio fruits and products is also increasing. The proportion of organic orchards is quite low (1–2 %) in Hungary. As regards application of cultivars, there are two possible solutions. One is to introduce new resistant cultivars from the national breeding programme into cultivation. The second is to evaluate old local cultivars to decide if they could be used in modern production systems. Our general aims are to characterise the cultivars in the apple gene bank of the Corvinus University of Budapest using morphological markers and to investigate the biodiversity of the collection. Morphological and biological characterisation of 56 different old cultivars was performed using the Union Internationale pour la Protection des Obtentions Vegetales (UPOV) descriptions. The collection exhibited great genetic diversity. The morphological similarity indexes suggest great distances between the cultivars. On the basis of hierarchical cluster analysis, all the cultivars differed greatly from the others with the exception of cultivars and cultivar groups which originated from bud mutations. It is currently hoped to re-register a number of old cultivars in Hungary, so information on the pomological characteristics of these cultivars will soon be of key importance. The biodiversity of the cultivars used by growers could be maintained or even widened by using the old cultivars stored in the gene bank as parents during the breeding process. Old cultivars possessing exceptional value and good pest and disease resistance can also be used in organic orchards.