ROOTSTOCK SELECTION FOR THE APRICOT CULTIVAR ‘MONIQUÍ’

‘Moniquí’ is one of the most valued apricot cultivars in Spain.
However, its cultivation is hampered by the problems encountered with the currently available rootstocks for this species.
These problems mainly involve adaptation to some of our local soil conditions and graft-incompatibility.
This work describes the two approaches that we are following to select appropriate rootstock genotypes for ‘Moniquí’. The first approach involves the prospection of old local orchards where ‘Moniquí’ grafted on unknown seedling rootstocks has been cultivated for a long time with no apparent soil adaptation or graft-incompatibility problems suggesting that they have gone through an empirical selection process.
Some of those seedling rootstocks were propagated in vitro and characterized using microsatellite markers.
The results obtained have allowed the grouping of the selected rootstock genotypes into three different groups, slow and fast growing plums, and apricots.
The second approach involves the analysis of a range of additional Prunus rootstocks grafted with ‘Moniquí’. Work is under way to study the agronomic and compatibility behaviour of the rootstocks obtained using the approaches described above.

I International Symposium on Rootstocks for Deciduous Fruit Tree Species

P. Errea, A. Wünsch, J.I. Hormaza

molecular markers, microsatellites, Prunus, selection

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.2004.658.69