Abstract
Breeding resistant apple cultivars is a long-term solution to fire blight, a devastating bacterial disease caused by Erwinia amylovora. However, most resistance sources have been characterized in wild genetic backgrounds with poor fruit quality. Additionally, strong influences of environment and tree vigor on susceptibility, quantitative resistance, and the disease’s erratic nature make phenotyping challenging. This study examined levels of resistance/susceptibility to fire blight among and within 32 full-sib families (n = 314 seedlings) in a pedigree-connected apple germplasm set. In 2016 and 2017, multiple actively-growing shoots per tree (approximately 3 trees per seedling) were challenged with E. amylovora. Responses were quantified as proportions of current season’s shoot lengths that were blighted (SLB). Within a year, seedling responses were estimated using mean adjusted SLB best linear unbiased predictions (adjusted SLB BLUPs). Responses ranged from highly resistant to highly susceptible (0.04–0.97 adjusted SLB BLUPs across years) and were relatively consistent between years (Spearman’s R2 = 0.55). K-means clustering was used to classify seedlings into resistance/susceptibility groups based on incidence, adjusted SLB BLUPs, maximum SLB, and maximum age of wood infected. Most families, including crosses between susceptible parents, demonstrated quantitative variation for resistance/susceptibility. Families derived from ‘Enterprise’ demonstrated low relative susceptibility. Depending on the year and model, average narrow-sense heritability estimates ranged from 0.22–0.49. Phenotypic information (1) increases understanding of variation and inheritance of resistance/susceptibility to fire blight in germplasm relevant to US apple breeding programs and (2) could be used in pedigree-informed QTL analyses to detect loci associated with resistance/susceptibility.
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26 May 2020
A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42161-020-00571-w
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Nancy Buchanan, Schaefer Buchanan, Lisa Brutcher, Jamie Coggins, and Bonnie Schonberg of the Washington State University (WSU) Tree Fruit Research and Extension Center for their assistance and/or technical expertise with carrying out these field inoculation experiments. Additionally, the authors would like to thank the WSU Columbia View orchard farm crew for maintaining the planting throughout the duration of this study. This study was partially funded by Washington Tree Fruit Research Commission projects # CP-15-100 (A, B, & C) and CP-12-104 (A & B), United States Department of Agriculture – National Institute of Agriculture award # 2016-68004-24770, United States Department of Agriculture – National Institute of Agriculture – Specialty Crop Research Initiative project ‘RosBREED: combining disease resistance and horticultural quality in new rosaceous cultivars’ (2014-51181-22378), and United States Department of Agriculture – National Institute of Agriculture Hatch project 1014919.
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Kostick, S.A., Norelli, J.L., Teh, S.L. et al. Quantitative variation and heritability estimates of fire blight resistance in a pedigree-connected apple germplasm set. J Plant Pathol 103 (Suppl 1), 65–75 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42161-020-00543-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42161-020-00543-0