Morphological and pomological characterizations of Pyrus syriaca Boiss. germplasm

Pyrus syriaca Boiss. is one of the wild pear species that has high tolerance against drought conditions. Morphological and pomological diversity among the accessions of this species selected from natural habitats was assessed. The accessions investigated showed high variation in terms of the variables recorded as revealed by analysis of variance (P <0.01). Fruit weight ranged from 5.24 to 22.50 g with an average of 10.67. Six types of fruit skin ground color were observed including light green, green, yellow-green, yellow, lemon-yellow, and white-yellow. The accessions were clustered into six groups based on fruit taste including tasteless, sour, sour-sweet, slightly sweet, sweet, and very sweet. Principal component analysis (PCA) showed that 16 principal components provided a reasonable summary of the data and explained 82.05 % of total variance. Ward cluster analysis using Euclidean distance classified the accessions into two main clusters each partitioned into two sub-clusters. The obtained findings showed high phenotypic variations among the accessions studied. Some accessions studied here could be selected as parents for fruit-quality related characters as major recent breeding objectives in pear breeding programs. The accessions of P. syriaca has been exposed to severe climate changes and stresses over time and have been able to adapt to these conditions, so it is likely that these accessions have the genes related to different resistance that can be used for breeding programs.