Inheritance of apple proliferation resistance by parental lines of apomictic Malus sieboldii as donor of resistance in rootstock breeding

To study inheritance of Malus sieboldii-derived apple proliferation resistance, 14 cross combinations were performed with the tetraploid apomictic M. sieboldii and first and second generation parental lines as donor of resistance and Malus x domestica scion cultivars and apple rootstocks as donor of pomological traits. In the progeny examined mainly three classes were present consisting of mother-like plants with the allele composition of the maternal apomict (ML), hybrids based on fertilization of an unreduced egg cell (hybrid I), and fully recombinant plants (hybrid II). Two-year screening of inoculated plants in the nursery revealed that progeny classes ML and H I responded similarly to infection and that about half of the progeny showed satisfactory resistance. No appropriate resistance was identified in progeny class H II. This might be due to the fact that in fully recombinant offspring M. sieboldii haplotypes have been reduced from 4n to 1-2n or were entirely lost. Following nursery-growing, promising trees were evaluated for six more years in the orchard. Nearly all of them showed satisfactory resistance but were mostly less productive and more vigorous than trees on clonal standard rootstock M9. However, mainly among the offspring of progeny 4608 × M9, resistant genotypes were identified showing pomological properties similar to M9.