By: Peter Rüegg
Researchers from ETH Zurich and the Julius Kühn Institute in Germany have created the first fire-blight-resistant apple. With the aid of so-called cis-genetic engineering, they transfered a resistance gene from a wild apple into the genome of a Gala apple. Tests in the greenhouse indicate that the gene is effective in protecting the tree against the disease.
Fruit farmers dread fire blight. The infection keeps flaring up again and causes considerable damage to apple plantations. In 2007, when the last major epidemic hit Switzerland, the damage the country suffered cost CHF 50 million and 250,000 trees had to be destroyed. Farmers primarily use sprays containing the antibiotic streptomycin against the pathogen, the bacterium Erwinia amylovora – a controversial method to save fruit trees and harvests.
A team of researchers headed by ETH-Zurich plant pathologist Cesar Gessler and from the Julius Kühne Institute in Germany report a genetically modified apple of the popular Gala variety in the latest issue of Plant Biotechnology Journal that is resistant to fire blight. In an earlier issue of this journal, the researchers presented an apple tree of the same variety that can ward off scab, a common fungal disease, thanks to the insertion of a scab resistance gene of a wild apple.
Note: This article was written in 2014. Updated plans for a field trial to be initiated in 2016 is reported here. The article is in French, but can be translated in Google Chrome by right clicking on the article and selecting translate to English.
Featured image: An apple infected with fire-blight. (Photo: S. Stabinger / Wikimedia Commons)
