Study of Variation of Some Unknown Olive Genotypes in Collection of Tarom Research Station in Iran, Applying Morphological Markers

Germplasm banks are basic sources for selecting and breeding programs. Iran is known as one of the origins of olive in the world with many different olive cultivars and considerable number of old olive orchards. Evaluation and classification of existing olive genotypes in Iran seems to be very important. Thirty-five years ago, 25 olive genotypes (originated from different parts of the world) had been transferred to an olive orchard near Gorgan city. In 1377 their duplicated plants obtained from these genotypes were transferred to collection of Olive Research Station in Tarom-Zanjan. Each selected genotypes propagated with nine replications and nominated as “Tn”. In this study we used morphological characteristics to identify these unknown genotypes. Samples were collected from 15 genotypes with three replications. Morphological data used for cluster analysis. By using of variance analysis, all the studied quantitative characters (except one) revealed significant differences between genotypes and clearly separated from each other. Comprising results with typical known Iranian olive cultivars, showed a remarkable distance between them.