User:Sonoba20/sandbox

Pests and Diseases
Chokeberries have a low susceptibility to plant diseases and only little problems with pests. Their resistance makes chokeberries a well suited crop for organic agriculture. The high content of flavonoids in the fruits and their acidic taste are likely to protect the chokeberry against pathogens and pests.

Here is a list of some possible pests and diseases of chokeberries:

Pests

Also, birds, mice and deer might feed on different parts of the chokeberry and thereby dammage the plant.
 * Aphids e.g.apple aphid (Aphis pomi), woolly aphid (Eriosoma lanigerum)
 * Mites e.g leaf blister mite (Eriophyes piri)
 * Drosophila suzukii – some studies found that Drosophila suzukii mainly infests damaged or destemmed fruits, while intact fruits are more resistant
 * Tooth-nose snout weevils (Rhynchitidae)
 * Wasps
 * Cockchafer grub
 * Codling moth

Fungal diseases


 * Dead arm disease (Phomopsis viticola)
 * Rusts (Pucciniales)
 * Powdry mildew (Erysiphales)

Bacterial diseases


 * Pseudomonas syringae
 * An infection with fire blight is theortically possible, as chokberries belong to the family of Rosaceae, but has so far not been observed.

The treatment methods for the different pests and diseases differ depending on the chosen agricultural practice (e.g. organic vs. conventional agriculture). Often mechanical measures can be taken such as ensuring sufficient sunlight and aeration between the plants or spanning nets as a protection against picking birds.

Breeding Aims and Genetic Preconditions for Breeding
One part of the breeding efforts focuse on improving red chokeberries for their use as ornamental plants. Breeding goals include the reduction of the plants stature, reduction of its tendency towards legginess, incresing the fruit size and improving leave retention for a longer lasting fall foliage. Breeding of the red chokeberry is difficult, because the available accessions are tetraploid plants and thus, are likely to produce apomictic seeds. Furthermore, the breeding of polyploids makes mutation breeding more challenging because the additional sets of chromosome can mask incomplete mutations. If breeders had access to a wild diploid A. arbutifolia breeding would arguably become more successful.

The breeding success of the black chokeberry for food production in Europe and Russia has been restricted because the genetic pool of the domesticated Russian plants is very homogenous. Breeding efforts aim to increase the content of flavonoids, antioxidants and anti-cancer compounds while maintaining or increasing the fruit size. Further breeding targets are improvement of the flavor of the berry, which currentley quite sour.