PRIORITY TRENDS IN APPLE BREEDING AND DEVELOPMENT OF WINTER CULTIVARS
Over 50 apple cultivars have been developed and regionalized at the FSBSI All Russain Research Institute of Fruit Crop Breeding. The priority trend is to develop scab immune cultivars, triploid cultivars and triploid cultivars with immunity to scab. ‘Veteran’, ‘Kulikovskoye’ and ‘Orlik’ are the best cultivars among diploid cultivars without immunity to scab and bearing fruit of winter maturing. Their descriptions are given in the article. Over 20 scab immune apple cultivars have been developed and included in the state register of breeding achievements admitted for use. The introduction of these cultivars allows reducing costs for orchard treatments with chemicals, increasing production output and making the environment in the orchards healthier. The characteristics of three best and well-known scab immune apple cultivars ‘Veniaminovskoye’, ‘Candil Orlovskiy’ and ‘Svezhest’ are given in this article. Breeding with polyploidy using is one of the priority trends in apple breeding. For the first time in the world at the All Russain Research Institute of Fruit Crop Breeding a series of triploid cultivars has been developed from intervalent crossings of the 2x x 4x type. Ten of them have already been included in the State Register. Triploid cultivars are characterized by a less periodicity in fruiting, marketable fruit and higher autogamy in comparison with diploid cultivars. Three best winter cultivars are characterized: ‘Sinap Orlovskiy’ (regionalized in the Central, Central-Chernozem, Middle- Volga and North-West regions) as well as ‘Ministr Kisiliov’ and ‘Turgenevskoye’ which are passing the state trials now. Triploid apple cultivars having immunity to scab are of special interest: winter cultivars ‘Aleksandr Boiko’ and ‘Vavilovskoye’ that were regionalized and described previously as well as ‘Rozhdestvenskoye’ obtained from two diploid cultivars and regionalized in 2001 and ‘Prazdnichnoye’, the descriptions of which are given here. Apple cultivars described in this article may significantly improve the apple assortment in the middle zone of Russia.