Developing breeding strategies and genomic tools to obtain high quality apple cultivars for sustainable cultivation. Research focuses on plant-pathogen interaction, post-harvest physiology, fruit quality (texture/taste/aroma) and ripening, mainly in apple, but recently also in nuts. Collection and conservation of apple and walnut genetic resources is another important objective, providing valuable sources of phenotypic and genetic variation for fruit breeding

Genetic, genomic and metabolomics approaches are applied to decipher biochemical pathways and key genes underlying specific traits, and to develop markers for efficient and targeted breeding (in collaboration with the Sequencing Platform)