Innovative Organic fruit Breeding and uses

The project aims to promote and aggregate Innovative Solutions (IS) focussed on the participative development of fruit varieties and on a fruit plant production system dedicated to the organic farming system. In order to optimize the overall system, key elements will be analysed: (i) actors, the nursery plant propagation sector and evaluation systems and the research outcomes to highlight the already available IS, bottlenecks and success factors in organic farming and access multi-actor shared ideotypes, (ii) evaluation tools, methods, selection procedures and social non-technological solutions for targeting the cultivars better adapted to OF (organic framing) through the definition of both European varieties and rootstocks testing protocols for screening varieties which are better adapted to OF and setting up an European Network of actors active in OF varieties and rootstocks testing (so-called OF-Variety Testing Network (OF-VTN)), (iii) the available Fruit-Tree Genetic Resources (FTGR), historical evaluation data and their consistency for fitting with our objectives, (iv) the possibilities offered by dedicated pre-breeding and breeding programmes, and finally (v) the elaboration of adapted Fruit-tree propagation scheme in agreement with EU rules. Through a joined ‘Actor’ targeted approach, InnOBreed will evaluate, implement and aggregate IS to promote the Fruit Organic industry by the development and deployment of suitable cultivars. In that way InnOBreed will help the fruit industry to meet the consumers’ quality requirements while responding to market, environment and agriculture needs for the next years, keeping in mind the fruit-chain sustainability. InnOBreed will be dedicated to Fruit perennial species: IS will be addressed with the Innovation providers, applied research will be performed on model couples (multi-traits x species) qualified as case studies for addressing the existing bottlenecks and seminars will be dedicated to translational approaches, training and transfers.