Chestnut orchards sustainability and resilience to climate change, a multidisciplinary approach through precision farming and breeding

Sustainability is the keyword for the future, particularly in food production systems, considering the ongoing climate changes. In chestnut orchards, improving input efficiency and selecting cultivars more resistant to biotic and abiotic stresses are two interesting approaches towards higher sustainability and resilience to climate change. The balanced development of the trees is important for their input conversion efficiency. Discovering non-destructive methodologies to understand the morpho-functional state of trees will help to prevent their stress. In this paper, the applicability of innovative methodologies, such as ground proximal sensing (chlorophyll content and fluorescence, stomatal conductance) and remote sensing (aerial images in visible and near-infrared wavelengths), was tested as efficient means for assessing the stress/vitality level of chestnut trees under evaluation. Agronomical characteristics of trees are important for their adaptability to orchard environment. The agronomical traits of a chestnut F1 progeny which consists of 130 11 years-old trees, obtained from the cross ‘Bouche de Bétizac’ (Castanea sativa × C. crenata) × ‘Madonna’ (C. sativa) were studied. The observations focused on vegetative (vigour, habitus, sucker emission, stamina typology), phenological (flowering and ripening time) and nut production traits (number of nuts kg-1, colour, shape, hairiness, stripes, number of embryos, pellicle intrusions, presence of pathogens and pests) in order to create a genetic linkage map and select interesting individuals for propagation and cultivation. Understanding plant morpho-functional state and needs is important to efficiently manage chestnut orchards from an agronomic point of view, while knowing genes linked to useful agronomical traits can facilitate breeding.