Morphological and genetic peculiarities of fruits in several winter apple varieties which confer resistance to damage
¹University of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine, Faculty of Horticulture, No. 3-5 Manastur St., 3400 Cluj-Napoca, Romania; e-mail: rsestras@email.ro
²Horticultural Research Station, 3-5 Horticultorilor St., Cluj-Napoca, Romania
Abstract:
Among 15 winter apple varieties studied for their resistance to the damage of fruits, Golden Delicious was susceptible to fruit injury, while the Florina, Idared and Granny Smith can be considered resistant to pricking, cutting and hitting of the fruits. The variability of the morphological characteristics of the fruits was relatively low, the fruit volume being averagely variable and the fruit resistance to injury being the character with the highest variability (s% = 26.4). The resistance of the fruits to injury was not correlated with their height, diameter, weight, shape and volume. The characteristics of the fruits have a strong genetic determinism, but the additive effects of the genes do not play the most important role in all cases. For the fruit resistance to injury the big differences between heritability coefficients values in a broad and narrow sense signify the fact that the resistance to injury of apples is influenced not only by additive effects but also by the dominance and epistasis effects of the genes.
Key words:
apple, damage, fruits, heritability, resistance, storage