Development of young pear trees and occurrence of first flowering: A varietal comparison

International audienceThe development of young pear trees was studied in a collection of varieties with diverse branching habits by establishing a precise description of their architecture over the first two years of growth. The objective here was to test growth, branching, and the final dimensions of the shoots as predictors of tree capability to enter into a reproductive phase in the third year. Nine pear cultivars (Pyrus communis L.) grafted on BA29 rootstock were grown with a minimal training system. Tree structure was described over the first two years of growth, and flowering occurrences were counted in the third year using AMAPmod methodology. Linear multiple ascendant regressions were constructed with different sets of explicative variables to explain the number of flowering occurrence. The results show clear differences between the cultivars, those examined being divided into two categories based on whether growth was greatest in the first or second year. The most accurate predictive variable of the flowering occurrence was the difference in the number of sylleptic laterals over the first two years of growth. The physiological reasons for this correlation are discussed. This result suggest that the difference in sylleptic laterals between the first two years of growth could be evaluated in breeding programmes to select the genotypes on the length of the unproductive period

The EKiTE network (epidemiology in kidney transplantation - a European validated database): an initiative epidemiological and translational European collaborative research

BACKGROUND: Kidney transplantation is considered to be the treatment of choice for people with end-stage renal disease (ESRD). However, due to the shortage of available organs and the increase in the ESRD prevalence in Europe, it is essential to improve transplantation outcomes by studying the related prognostic factors. Today, there is no European registry collecting data to perform such clinical epidemiology studies. MAIN BODY: Entitled EKiTE, for European cohort for Kidney Transplantation Epidemiology, this prospective and multicentric cohort includes patients from Spanish (Barcelona), Belgian (Leuven), Norwegian (Oslo) and French (Paris Necker, Lyon, Nantes, Nancy, Montpellier, Nice and Paris Saint Louis) transplantation centers and currently contains 13,394 adult recipients of kidney (only) transplantation from 2005 and updated annually. A large set of parameters collected from transplantation until graft failure or death with numbers of post-transplantation outcomes. The long-term follow-up and the collected data enable a wide range of possible survival and longitudinal analyses. CONCLUSION: EKiTE is a multicentric cohort aiming to better assess the natural history of the ESRD in European kidney transplant recipients and perform benchmarking of clinical practices. The data are available for clinical epidemiology studies and open for external investigators upon request to the scientific council. Short-term perspectives are to extend EKITE network to other European countries and collect additional parameters in respect of the common thesaurus.status: publishe