In the past, our plum interspecific breeding program aimed to create rootstocks with general grafting compatibility and waterlogging tolerance. Because of the shifting of peach cultivation towards the south the objectives of our program were modified. Today they are : root knot nematodes (RKN) resistance, tolerance to chlorosis, drought, asphyxiation, salinity and crown-gall. A genetic study on myrobalan (P. cerasifera) allowed to state precisely that high resistant clones to RKN result from the presence of one dominant gene (Ma). None of the 22 RKN populations studied was virulent in the resistant myrobalans. This resistance is very stable (high inoculum pressure or high temperature). Six molecular markers using RAPD technique were revealed. Two of them are likely to be used for assisted selection. A new interspecific breeding program was initiated using the myrobalan resistant source together with the gene(s) comming from the Nemared peach, to create highly resistant rootstock.