The main purpose of this Master Thesis has been to investigate issues concerning apple fruit quality in orchards of Äppelriket Österlen. The goal has been to develop a document, for future benefit towards growers and company management in the production of high quality apples.In order to investigate main issues of fruit quality, focus has been on statistics concerning apple varieties, age of the apple trees, new planting, orchard size and growers opinions. Nine growers have been interviewed to investigate opinions and contribution of different growing techniques to increased fruit quality. The investigation showed high age of the trees in production and low rate of planting of new trees. Differences in fruit quality were highest between small orchards. Most growers were satisfied with their fruit quality and with their own measures made to improve it.

Gene technology has become more and more attractive in plant breeding during the last twenty years. This is probably because it can readily improve the existing commercial cultivars that have only one or a few drawbacks by modifying one or a few genes without changing the main genetic constitution. In this regard, gene technology is more effective than conventional breeding.The aim of this project was to analyze the fruit quality of the non-transgenic apple scion ?Jonagold? grafted on non-transgenic and rolB-transgenic apple rootstocks. The rootstocks used were M9-rolB1, M9-rolB2, M26-rolB and non-transgenic controls M9 and M26.

Kalcium står i nära relation med kvaliteten hos frukten inom en rad olika växtslag, däribland äpple. Genom att tillgodose fruktens behov av kalcium så kan kvaliteten höjas vilket resulterar i ett mer lagringsdugligt äpple samt en större andel klass 1 frukt och därmed en högre inkomst. Samspelet mellan kalcium och frukt är komplext vilket kräver goda kunskaper för att förstå hur och när kalcium tas upp av frukten. Syftet med detta arbete är att sammanställa tillgänglig information om vad kalcium har för funktion hos äpple och hur man kan tillföra kalcium till frukten. Genom att känna till hur kalcium tas upp och transporteras hos äpple så är det lättare att avgöra hur man ska gödsla och när man ska gödsla.