ABSTRACT
Importance of Fruit Crops in Europe ..................................................................... 125 Field Trials with GM Fruit Crops in Europe .......................................................... 127
Apple ................................................................................................................. 127 Citrus ................................................................................................................. 131 Cherry ................................................................................................................ 132 Grapevine .......................................................................................................... 133 Kiwifruit ............................................................................................................ 134 Pear .................................................................................................................... 135 Plum .................................................................................................................. 135 Raspberry .......................................................................................................... 136 Strawberry ......................................................................................................... 137
Focus of Research on GM Fruit Crops in Europe .................................................. 137 Improvement of Agronomically Important Traits ............................................. 137 Use of Early Flowering GM Plants to Accelerate Breeding Cycles ................. 137 Development of a Rapid Assay for Gene Function Analysis ............................ 138 Development of New Systems for GM Fruit Crop Production ......................... 139
References .............................................................................................................. 142
Fruit crop production is of particular economic importance in Europe. In 2007, a total of 77.5 million metric tons of fruit crops were produced in Europe on approximately 8.7 million hectares of land (https://faostat.fao.org). Italy, Spain, and France are the main producers with more than 60% of the overall production. The entire spectrum of fruit crops produced in Europe consists of more than 30 different fruit species with grapes, apples, and oranges as the three most important. An overview of the cultivated fruit crops is given in Table 5.1.
