Towards the development of molecular markers for apple volatiles

Improving flavour quality of apple varieties is an important but complex breeding goal. Flavour is among the key factors of apple fruit quality but in spite of the analytical and biochemical knowledge about volatiles little is known about the genetic and molecular basis of apple aroma. The aim of this paper is to give an overview about the complex analytical investigations on metabolite patterns, quantitative trait locus mapping and development of a first functional marker for acetate esters with high sensory impact based on single nucleotide polymorphisms within a candidate gene encoding a key enzyme involved in the last step of ester biosynthesis (alcohol acyl-transferase, MdAAT1).