Morphological variability within and among three species of Ziziphus genus using multivariate analysis

Ber (Ziziphus ssp.), a tropical and subtropical fruit, is native to the northern hemisphere. Little information is available about the phenotypic diversity of this fruit crop. In the present study, phenotypic divergence among 65 individuals of three species belonging to Ziziphus genus including Z. nummularia, Z. spina-christi and Z oxyphylla was evaluated based on leaf and fruit characteristics. The clear differences were detected among the studied individuals for all of the noted characteristics. Leaf length ranged 1.89-3.70 cm for Z. spina-christi, 1.64-3.59 cm for Z. nummularia and 2.31-4.07 cm for Z. oxyphylla. Fruit weight ranged 1.10-3.08 g for Z. spina-christi, while it was varied 0.98-2.10 g for Z. nummularia and 0.96-3.14 g for Z. oxyphylla. The highest TSS for Z. spina-christi and Z. oxyphylla was 25%, while it was 28% for Z. nummularia. Seed weight ranged 0.32-1.17 g for Z. spina-christi, 0.29-0.88 g for Z nummularia and 0.22-0.90 g for Z. oxyphylla. Simple correlation analysis showed the existence of high significant positive correlations between leaf, and fruit characters. The principal component and cluster analyses showed high phenotypic diversity among and within the studied species, indicating that the measured traits were useful for characterization of Ziziphus genus. Finally, the present findings demonstrated that some of the studied individuals are to be promising for utilization in the breeding programs.