Challenges in breeding high quality apples with durable disease resistance.

The appearance of scab (Venturia inaequalis) strains that are able to overcome the broadly used Vf (Rvi6) scab resistance as well as the spread of new diseases such as Marssonina coronaria, highly relevant for organic apple growing, require adapted strategies for the breeding of new varieties. Approaches for breeding new high quality apple varieties with diverse resistance to several diseases considering phenotypic and molecular selection techniques and results achieved up to now in the Agroscope apple breeding programme will be shown and discussed.