Tribute to a Leading Personality of World Horticultural Science

Following the proposal of Academic Council of Horticulture Faculty, the Senate of University of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine Cluj-Napoca accepted nominee Professor Jules Janick for Doctor Honoris Causa award. The title was awarded in festive ceremony on September 30, 2010. Jules Janick, Professor at Purdue University has a long and distinguished career devoted to horticulture in all its facets. In horticultural research, he has made important advances including the genetics of sex determination including the synthesis of heteromorphic sex chromosomes, fireblight resistance, cleistogamy, cucurbitacins, artemisisin production, anthocyanin pigmentation, as well as in vitro metabolite production from somatic embryos and the production of synthetic seed. In crop improvement, he has been associated with the release of 21 scab-resistant apple cultivars, three pear cultivars with tolerance to fireblight, delayed-bolting arugula, crack resistant tomato, and the first release of a pelargonium cultivar from somaclonal variation. Professor Janick has made contributions to the historical aspects of horticulture and explored the relation of art and horticultural technology with special studies on the iconography of Rubus, Cucurbitaceae, and Solanaceae, opening up a new approach to the study of plant diversity, origins, cultivar evolution, and diversity. Professor Janick has been a prolific author and editor in horticulture. He was the editor of HortScience and editor of the Journal of ASHS. He is the founder and editor of both Horticultural Reviews and Plant Breeding Reviews. Since 2002 he has been the science editor of Chronica Horticulturae (ISHS). Janick has edited and produced six proceedings of New Crops symposia since 1990 that have had a deep impact on new crop information. The development of a new crop website has become a major world resource for information on crops. He is the author of the texts Horticultural Science, Plant Science: An Introduction to World Crops, and the co-editor of a series of monographs on fruit breeding. So far in his career Janick has written or edited 140 volumes, a truly prodigious achievement; he has taught numerous courses in genetics, plant breeding, and horticulture. Professor Janick has become one of the best known personalities of world horticulture. His credo has been that advances in horticulture throughout the centuries represent some of the greatest human accomplishments for the betterment of humanity

New Products against Apple Scab and Powdery Mildew Attack in Organic Apple Production

Interspecific hybridizations represent one of the apple breeding methods by which a wide variability can be achieved, useful for creating new cultivars. The study of 2190 interspecific hybrids, obtained from 25 combinations among crab apple species (Malus coronaria, M. floribunda, M. niedzwetzkyana, M. zumi, M. prunifolia) and different apple cultivars, points out a large variability of the F1 seedlings for several traits, with significant importance in apple breeding programs. The first year of fructification, as mean per hybrid combination, varied from 6 (M. zumi x ‘Jonathan’) to 9.3 years; the average hybrid’s age for fructification was 7.4 years. The size of fruits among families varied from 1.5 (‘Starkrimson’ x M. prunifolia) to 4.0 (‘Reinette Baumann’ x M. zumi), the mean being settled at 2.8 (therefore below mark 3, meaning ‘small fruits’). The lowest infection rate both for apple scab and powdery mildew attack was noticed at hybrids from M. coronaria x ‘Reinette Baumann’. On the whole, the hybrids with genitors of ‘species x cultivars’ type have had an early fruiting and a better resistance to scab and powdery mildew, compared to the ones from ‘cultivars x species’ combinations. The large variability of the studied traits gave the possibility to identify offsprings with desirable characteristics on nine hybrid combinations. Among these, 53 elite plants were selected, with a strength of selection of 2.42%, therefore a relative low value, correlated with the peculiarities of the interspecific population and the selection criteria for dessert apple