Climate change will influence disease resistance breeding in wheat in Northwestern Europe.

Wheat productivity is threatened by global climate change. In several parts of NW Europe it will get warmer and dryer during the main crop growing period. The resulting likely lower realized on-farm crop yields must be kept by breeding for resistance against already existing and emerging diseases among other measures. Multi-disease resistance will get especially crucial. In this review, we focus on disease resistance breeding approaches in wheat, especially related to rust diseases and Fusarium head blight, because simulation studies of potential future disease risk have shown that these diseases will be increasingly relevant in the future. The long-term changes in disease occurrence must inevitably lead to adjustments of future resistance breeding strategies, whereby stability and durability of disease resistance under heat and water stress will be important in the future. In general, it would be important to focus on non-temperature sensitive resistance genes/QTLs. To conclude, research on the effects of heat and drought stress on disease resistance reactions must be given special attention in the future.

Fruit quality and bioactive compounds with antioxidant activity of tomatoes grown on-farm: comparison of organic and conventional management systems.

Replicated field trials at three matched farm pairs in southern and central Taiwan were established in October 2004 and 2005 to compare fruit quality and nutritional parameters of tomatoes grown on-farm under organic versus conventional management systems in tropical and subtropical environments. Two processing tomato varieties were evaluated using a randomized complete block design at each of the farms. Aggregation of farms by type (organic vs conventional) across two years resulted in no significant differences between organic and conventional farming systems for all tomato fruit parameters measured, including quality (pH, soluble solids, acidity, and color), content of bioactive compounds with antioxidant activity (beta-carotene, lycopene, ascorbic acid, and total phenolics), and antioxidant activity. This study indicated no consistent effect of the farming system on tomato fruit parameters. Farm management skills combined with site-specific effects contributed to high lycopene levels, and the choice of variety significantly influenced the content of bioactive compounds, particularly ascorbic acid and total phenolics.