Study of morphological characteristics of different Berberis. spp genotypes in northeast of Iran

Iran as one of the main areas of plant diversity has desirable genetic reserves for plants, especially horticultural products. Barberry is also a micro-fruit that is susceptible to primary research due to the presence of wild populations throughout the country, including collecting of different genotypes and their examination in order to identify the advantages and disadvantages of this plant and their classification. The aim of this study was to investigate the morphological characteristics of different Northwestern barberry genotypes in Iran and to investigate their relationship with each other.

This study was carried out to evaluate the morphological characteristics of different barberry genotypes in northwestern of Iran at 2017. In this study, 15 different genotypes of barberry were collected from North Khorasan, South Khorasan, Khorasan Razavi and Golestan provinces, and their morphological characteristics, such as leaf and fruit characteristics of barberry genotypes, were investigated and, at the end were done their correlation and cluster analysis.

The results showed that the effect of genotype treatment was significant on all studied traits in this study. Regarding these results, it was determined that the number of leaves per node (8.6 leaves), thoracic length (3.96 cm) and thoracic angle (106 degrees) in Daregaz 2 genotype were higher than other studied genotypes, while the petiole length (42.1 cm) in Shirvan 2 genotype was higher than other genotypes. Considering that the cluster length (7.3 cm) and 100 fruit dry weight (8.55 grams) of Shirvan3 genotype were more than the other genotypes, but the results showed that Birjand seedless genotypes in terms of number of leaves per cluster (18 leaves per cluster) and fruit tail length (9.6 mm) were superior to other grain genotypes. The results also showed that Golestan 5 genotype was superior to other genotypes in terms of fruit length (11.97 mm) and length to diameter of fruit (1.98). The relationship between fresh and dry weights and the volume of 100 fruits with the cluster length, fruit length and the fruit diameter were positive and with increasing of these traits, barberry fruit fresh and dry weights were increased. The results of cluster analysis at 0.5 distances were categorized barberry genotypes in five main groups, which in the first and fifth group were Shirvan 3 Daregaz 1 genotypes respectively, which show their differences with other studied genotypes. The Birjand seedless genotype, along with the Shirvan 1, Shirvan 4, Shirvan 2, Derogas 3 and Deragas 2 genotypes, were in one group, indicating the closing of their morphological characteristics.

The results of this study showed that various barberry genotypes had a wide range of morphological characteristics that were divided into similar groups by sharing them and could be used for amend purpose of barberry genotypes.