Inheritance of Phenological Traits in Apricot Progenies

The impact of global changes is becoming a serious concern at a world scale, and its influence could be rather large on perennial plant behaviour. Within fruit species, advances in blooming dates and floral disorders in relation to temperature increase during period of dormancy and bud burst have already been shown. Unfortunately among fruit species, apricot is expected to be one of the most susceptible in relation to the restricted adaptation of the local cultivars to narrow geographic areas. Thus, in order to overcome the negative trends and to safeguard apricot fruit production, the identification of the genetic components involved in blooming and maturity periods becomes of major interest. A global genetic analysis has been conducted on 4 apricot progenies issued from different genetic backgrounds; two progenies were cultivated in Avignon (Fr), one in Bologna (It), and one in Murcia (Sp). The four progenies were phenotyped for blooming and maturity dates at least for 2 years (except the Italian one evaluated only for the maturity date). The segregations have been examined and QTL analyses have been performed on the whole data set. The QTL stability across years has been analysed for the two traits. The influence of the genetic background has been discussed