Conservation and characterization of fruit landraces of Umbria region.

The 3A Technologic Agrofood Park of Umbria (3A PTA) and the Department of Agronomic and Environmental Sciences (DSAA) of the Faculty of Agronomy of the Perugia University, since 2001 cooperate to the rescue, the conservation and the valorisation of the regional crop biodiversity, focusing mainly on old fruit varieties threatened by erosion or extinction. In 2005 a first phase of the activity led to the creation of an in vitro genebank conserving 50 accessions belonging to 6 different species. It is well known, indeed, that micropropagation allows to produce, in a short time and in aseptic conditions, large numbers of shoots from small quantities of initial materials (meristem tip or shoot bud) collected from a single mother plant. Two inventory orchards with 102 local accessions (37 in the 3A PTA and 65 in the Agronomic Foundation fields) were also set up through graft propagation. Since 2009 the second phase of the cooperation was undertaken, with the aim of extending the surveys and the rescue of the biodiversity and carrying out the morphological and phenological characterization of the varieties collected in the 3A PTA field. On seven local apple genotypes, among the most remarkable ones of the collection, the Department of Applied Biology (DBA) of the Perugia University is carrying out a molecular fingerprinting. An organoleptic characterization is also planned. The aim is to clearly define and describe the main characters of distinctiveness of such accessions, to collect useful informations for their potential further exploitation. At the purpose, two different typologies of experimental orchards are going to be set up in two regional farms with the same genotypes. The agronomic and productive attitudes of such genotypes through the use of clonal rootstocks will be evaluated. All the activities are financied by the P.S.R. 2000-2006 and 2007-2013 funds of Umbria region.