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Have you ever wondered what it takes to create better apples or cherries? Well, it starts with germplasm.
Germplasm is genetic material like plants, trees, seeds, pollen, tissues and other living matter scientists collect for breeding purposes. For scientist Dr. Amritpal Singh, who is dedicated to tree fruit breeding, germplasm development is his focus.
Based at the Summerland Research and Development Centre in British Columbia, where cherries and apples have been bred for about 100 years, Dr. Singh spends his time trying to make better cherries and apples.
What is considered “better fruit”?
What makes a better cherry or apple? It depends on who you ask, but two key groups to consider are farmers and consumers. Farmers are concerned with the long-term consistent productivity of the trees themselves – they want to produce more split-free, evenly sized, defect-free fruit that will ripen at the correct time and store well. Consumers, on the other hand, are more concerned about the sensory qualities of the end product – things like sweetness, or textural properties such as crispness of the fruit or toughness of the skin, for example.
On the end product side, Dr. Singh’s colleagues at Summerland Research and Development Centre have improved the understanding of consumer perception of apple texture. Dr. Masoumeh Bejaei and her team have developed models that can correlate instrumental measurements of textural attributes in apples to human perception.
On the production side, Dr. Singh’s colleagues are working to improve the crops for farmers. For example, Dr. Hao Xu’s team is working on ways to build climate resilience in apple orchards. They have found that larger rootstock selection may prove to be a viable long-term measure. Dr. Singh’s own program also has a long history of introducing large, firm cherry varieties covering a range of maturities, particularly later varieties which extend the production season – and help producers fetch a premium price.
The role of germplasm development
With all these factors to consider, the apple and cherry breeding team evaluates germplasm to determine which new lines will be the best for production. Breeding happens in multiple stages, over which the strongest options are kept moving forward. Researchers in Summerland started apple breeding in 1924 and sweet cherry breeding in 1936, and while the end goal is much the same (improving economic returns for the growers), the technology of today has incredibly advanced.
The breeding program at Summerland has test orchards that now contain approximately 30,000 unique apples and 8,000 unique sweet cherries. Each year, the cherry and apple breeding team plants approximately 5,000 new, individual apple seedlings and 1,000 new, individual cherry seedlings. From these, the team takes various measurements – particularly the characteristics of the fruits, such as size, colour, texture, firmness and so on. Moreover, because of the relatively short harvest season of each fruit crop, data collection on the germplasm has to be accomplished in just 8 to 9 weeks for each crop.
This creates mountains of data – data which used to be manually entered for analysis. However, thanks to technological progress and the dedication of research scientists, much of this can be done with technology.
Dr. Singh joined the breeding program at Summerland in 2017. Since then, he has seen many advancements, but two he is most proud of are: 1) his role in digital transformation of the germplasm evaluation process and 2) the development and recent offering of 7 tree fruit selections to the Canadian horticulture industry. Now that data entry of the thousands of samples and the compilation of that data are automated, Dr. Singh and his team have immediate access to more consistent information that they can easily align with data from different evaluations. In all, this work is opening up new avenues for research to support farmers, in addition to the newly identified selections of tree fruits which will help with economic growth of the horticulture sector.
The team has also worked with data scientists from the University of British Columbia to develop an AI-based image analysis tool that uses a low-cost camera to automate fruit counting in real-time and measures the size and colour of hundreds of fruits in an image in a few seconds.
“Digital transformation is about saving time and increasing accuracy and consistency by reducing the tedious effort of manual data collection. While we’re not shortening the breeding process per se, what we are able to do is make data-driven decisions sooner resulting in significant time and resource savings, all while taking up newer research projects which will further help us in improving the sustainability of the sector through improved tree fruit germplasm.”
-Dr. Amritpal Singh, Research Scientist, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada
The team anticipates further modernization of their program and wider adoption of these technologies among researchers in similar fields. Next time you bite into an apple or sweet cherry, consider that more than 99% of the seedlings planted each year will not end up as new varieties. There’s a lot of condensed taste – and data – in every bite.
Key benefits and discoveries
- Apple and cherry breeding take place at AAFC’s Summerland Research and Development Centre – in fact, around 80 % of the world’s cherry varieties originate here.
- Led by Dr. Amritpal Singh, a team of Summerland-based scientists have improved data collection and analyses techniques by implementing automation which has improved efficiency generates more consistent information.
- By studying the germplasm characteristics of new seedlings, researchers can develop new varieties that respond to both producer and consumer needs.
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