Future-proof varieties must exhibit a high tolerance to abiotic stresses such as late frost, summer heat and drought. Equally important is varietal resistance to pathogens, which ensures productivity even with increased pest or disease pressure, thereby creating scope for adapted plant-protection strategies.
In Work-Package 2 – Resilient Fruit Production with Adapted Varieties – methods for evaluating varietal resilience are developed, validated and implemented in the regular test process. Existing fruit-variety testing (Agroscope, FiBL, sectoral networks) is expanded so as to include in future the testing of varietal resistance along with agronomic suitability for cultivation and fruit quality.
The selection of suitable descriptors and measuring techniques is determined with the information bases of the relevant organisations (test results of the various sites in recent years) and through experience in similar projects, for example INVITE (https://www.h2020-invite.eu/).
