Detalle de: Selection of plant material and optimization of yield in subtropical fruit crops

Subtropical fruits are key products for food security in a wide range of countries and their commercial importance is increasing exponentially worldwide. The particular situation of Spain as the only European country with a significant commercial production of subtropical fruits allows us to be a major player at the international level in scientific studies of these species, in which scientific advances are well behind those in other crops mainly because they are cultivated in countries with scarce resources devoted to research and only recently their importance has started to be taken into account in some developed countries. As a result of the effort performed previously, we are currently in a position to make a qualitative move forward combining basic and applied research in a new multidisciplinary project that proposes specific advances based on results obtained in the past. The main objective of this proposal is to optimize a sustainable production in subtropical fruit crops. This main objective is divided in three specific objectives; the first 1) provides the sustrate of plant material through the study of genetic diversity and germplasm conservation, the second 2) studies the bottlenecks at the reproductive level that limits production and the third 3) focuses in the selection of traits of interest and the development of new varieties