A major resistance gene from Russian apple ‘Antonovka’ conferring field immunity against apple scab is closely linked to the Vf locus

A major scab resistance gene called Va1 was identified in the Russian apple cultivar ‘Antonovka’ (accession APF22) conferring scab resistance under conditions of natural scab infection in the field. After scab scorings over a period of 3 years, a 1:1 segregation was observed in the mapping population 04/214 (‘Golden Delicious’× ‘Antonovka’). The Va1 resistance gene provides sufficient broad spectrum resistance that is of use in apple resistance breeding and has been assigned Rvi17 according the proposal for a new scab nomenclature (Bus et al., Acta Horticulturae 814:739–746, 2009). Analysis of simple sequence repeats (SSRs) located on the apple linkage group (LG) 1 showed that the Va1 locus is closely linked (1 cM) to SSR CH-Vf1 known to cosegregate with the Vf locus. A tight genetic association was also observed between a specific cleaved amplified polymorphic sequence marker (ARD-CAPS) developed from the HcrVf paralog Vf2ARD present in ‘Antonovka’, but there is no indication yet for a causal relationship with Vf2ARD. Although the whole race spectrum of Va1 is still unknown, it was obvious that it acts against the scab races 6 and 7 which are able to overcome the resistance of Malus floribunda 821. A second resistance factor (named Va2) was studied by race 1-specific scab tests based on grafted 04/214 clones. A 1:1-segregation ratio was observed, too, but 18 “phenotypic recombinants” were found after comparisons with the field scab data of the same genotypes. Va2 was mapped on LG 1 with a genetic distance of about 15 cM above CH-Vf1. The positions of the newly identified ‘Antonovka’ scab resistance factors are compared with previously reported Va mapping approaches and published results from quantitative trait loci analyses performed with different ‘Antonovka’ genotypes.