Relationship between vigor of Iranian Prunus mahaleb L. selected dwarf rootstocks and some morphological characters

Prunus mahaleb L. and Prunus avium L. are the principal rootstocks used in Iran and world wide for sweet and sour cherries. This study was conducted at Khorasan Natural Resources and Agricultural Research Center with the main purpose of investigation of genetic variation and identification of mahaleb dwarf genotypes for cherry rootstock breeding. We evaluated morphological characters of 17 mahaleb populations. One-way analysis of variance was performed for determination of different regions genetic diversity, which indicated significant differences for most traits. Correlation coefficient showed significant correlation between tree vigor, crown width, and crown volume and size index. Factor analysis detected that in the first factor, crown height, size index, crown width, trunk circumference and crown volume had highest factor loading, bark to wood ratio, internode and chlorophyll content were the second most important and third factor was leaf area. These factors contained 57.9% of total variance. Results also showed that mahaleb seedlings had vigor variation. (c) 2006 Published by Elsevier B.V.