Final Report Summary - STONE (Genetic diversity of Stone Fruit trees (Peach, Apricot and Cherry) in Europe, Caucasus and Central Asia)
The STONE project addressed scientific issues related to stone fruit (Prunus species) biodiversity. It was a four-year coordinated joint program of staff exchange for short and medium periods between two European organizations (INRA in France, JKI in Germany), an associated (Inonu University in Turkey) and two ICPC third countries (Azerbaijan Genetic Resource institute and in China, the Liaoning Institute of Pomology and Jiangsu Institute of Horticulture). The STONE IRSES scheme was designed to provide opportunities of mobility to 42 researchers and support research staff, for a total number of 80 months over 4 years. The program of exchange was intended to develop common tools and to jointly use these tools for the comparison of the genetic biodiversity in the European, Caucasian and Central Asian Apricot, Peach and Cherry germplasm.
Through the close collaboration between partners of European, Associated and third countries, STONE allowed to define a pool of Prunus material representing the largest part of the intra-specific diversity of alleles and phenotypic variability, mostly in apricot and to a lower extent, in peach and cherry. It displays a wide range of alleles within a moderate size of population with high resolution and it will be used in a close future in association studies for the exploration of the genetic basis of evolution as well as the genetic determinism of target agronomic traits.