Challenges and Strategies for Developing Climate-Smart Apple Varieties Through Genomic Approaches

Apple is one of the most consumed and traded fruit crops in the world, and its health benefits as well as economic importance cannot be overestimated. Being a temperate fruit crop, it requires winter chilling to release its seasonal dormancy and complete the phenological cycle through fruit production. Since climatic conditions significantly influence the quality and yield of the fruit, understanding the effect of climatic variations on apple cultivation is of prime importance. In addition, characterization of available genetic resources is required to develop climate-resilient apple cultivars with high quality and yield. In the recent decades, large amount of transcriptomic, genomic, genetic, and breeding data has been generated; their structuring and digitalization should provide support to the breeders and agricultural biotechnologists in their daily duties with effective solutions. Such coordination of information along with data exchange, data transfer, and improved analytical capacity is those prerequisites that make possible ‘information-driven’ breeding process. We review the current state of generated knowledge and its digitalization for apple plant breeding, highlight the availability of precise and robust detection systems enabling automation in apple breeding, and conclude with the discussion of future prospects.