Morphological diversity among pomegranate genetic resources from Northeastern part of Turkey

This research was conducted in the Coruh Valley located in Northeastern part of Turkey. The valley is accepted one of the 34 hotspots in terms of plant biodiversity in the world. Pomegranate cultivation in this region is one of the main agricultural activities with viticulture. In spite of importance and richness of pomegranate biodiversity from this region, local germplasm of this region has not been investigated yet. For this reason pomegranate (Punica granatum L.) population of c. 10,000 seedling shrubs was examined with regard to morphological fruit properties. In the first year of the study, 56 promising pomegranate genotypes were selected from the valley. There was huge morphological variation among genotypes, in terms of particular fruit color, fruit weight, fruit dimensions, aril color and fruit firmness. The genotypes exhibited a range of 147-769 g for fruit weight, 65.19-107.08 mm for fruit width, 56.84-96.93 mm for fruit length, 2.69-6.05 mm peel thickness and 14.8-49.8 kg/cm(2) fruit firmness. The selected promising genotypes were preserved in a collection parcel as perspective parental genotypes for future breeding activities.