ThePRI disease resistant apple breeding program is a joint project of thePurdue University,Rutgers University, and theUniversity of Illinois, to breedapplecultivars to be resistant toapple scab. The initialism stands for the three involved universities: Purdue, Rutgers and Illinois.[1]
During the early 20th century,C. S. Crandall carried out intensive studies of crosses between the cultivated apples andcrab apples, with the goal of scab resistance.[2] However, Crandall didn't see any fruits of his investigations.[3]L. Fredric Hough, then a graduate student at the University of Illinois, studied Crandall's work. Hough published a paper in 1944, leading to a 1945 collaboration with Purdue Universitypathologist J. Ralph Shay. Hough then relocated to Rutgers and the collaborative effort was extended there.[2]
The modifiedbackcross breeding strategy used cultivatedapple with recurrent parents from selected susceptible members of the wild ancestralgenusmalus. Several Malus species were screened and utilized to incorporate their resistance factors into the more advanced pomological backgrounds.[2]
By 2000, the PRI have already released a total of eighteen apple cultivars, containing the scab-resistantVf gene derived fromMalus floribunda 821. Fifty-some PRI germplasm cultivars have also been released worldwide.[2]
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