New CIV apple selection project looks for collaborators in Europe

The Italian Breeders Consortium (CIV) is seeking collaborators to trial its very early apple variety, with attractive, bright red fruit and very crisp and juicy flesh. Part of the CIV’s special initiative, the new variety has a harvest period which starts 2-3 days before Gala. The plant offers scab resistance, and has high and constant production, not subject to early fruit drop. The variety has a large harvesting window and is suitable for both conventional and organic production, in cold and temperate climates. The fruit is mid-large sized with an attractive appearance. The skin is a bright red uniform colour covering 60%-80% of the fruit, while its background colour is yellow. The flesh is very crunchy and juicy, with a mid-high sweet flavour and good level of acidity.

This initiative offers Europe’s apple producers the opportunity to set up new advanced pilot orchards with this new apple directly in its property. The main objective is to increase the experimentation sites with different soil and climatic characteristics and to shift the focus away from small experimental sites towards larger more ‘commercial-styled’ plots.

CIV is very interested in collaborating with key producers and/or stakeholders operating in the apple industry, both in Italy and in the rest of Europe. As part of this activity, participation in the project will see special conditions as well as an attempt to disseminate and share the results generated by this initiative among all participants. Interested participants should order the testing trees from the CIV by the end of July 2018 to enable the authorised nurseries to graft the requested trees.

For more technical information and specifications about the initiative shown here, please contact marco.bertolazzi@civ.it.

“We hope to involve a significant number of potential partners in the apple industry at an international level and look forward to the expression of interest in response to our public invitation,” said variety manager Marco Bertolazzi and director Eugenio Bolognesi.

The CIV is a leading Italian company in plant variety innovation and in the production of certified propagating material. Founded in 1983, it is based in San Giuseppe di Comacchio in the province of Ferrara and composed of three leading Italian plant breeders: Vivai Mazzoni, Salvi Vivai and Tagliani Vivai.