Evaluation of Pomegranate (Punica granatum L.) genotypes in Lorestan province by Morphological and Biochemical Characteristics

In this study, 21 pomegranate genotypes were collected from Lorestan province, and evaluated using morphological and biochemical characteristics. Results of variance analysis showed statistic significant differences between genotypes, except for percent of skin, pH, and soluble solids traits. The amount of variation in total genotypes, showed the highest coefficient of variation was 50.11, 46.06 and 32.22% for vitamin C, weight of fruit and amount of acid, respectively. Principal components analysis showed that four main factors could have denoted 98.91% of the total variation. Distribution of genotypes using Principal components analysis was performed and plot distribution of genotypes showed that A7 (‘Souze shine Shah Taj Kutah’) genotype had the highest fruit weight, the two main components of the first and second highest coefficient was positive. Traits such as single berry weight, the total weight of the skin, weight of 10 seeds, leaf length to width ratio, the percentage of skin in the first component (PC1) and crown length, acidity, leaf and fruit in the second component (PC2), was grouped respectively. Cluster analysis of genotypes was performed by Ward method and 21 genotypes in Euclidian distance 5 were classified into six clusters that genotypes collected from a region were located in different clusters. In this study, important factors in genotype grouping were weight and figure of fruit. These result obtained due to differences between genotypes in each region and no relation betwen genetic distance with geographical distance was found.