Identification of Palestinian Colored-table-grape Cultivars by Means of Morphological and Pomological Descriptors

Abstract

Palestine is a treasure chest of plant genetic diversity that hosts a large variety of plants including grapevines. Unfortunately, this diversity is challenged dramatically due to different biotic and abiotic stress resulted thereby in the disappearance of many local grapevine cultivars. The aim of this work was a multidisciplinary characterization, documentation and conservation of Palestinian colored-table-grapes. A detailed morphological and pomological (16 plant and leaf as well as 23 fruit) informative descriptors were used to assess genetic diversity and detect similarities and variations among 19 assumed cultivars collected from the southern region of West-Bank, Palestine. Examined different traits of plant, leaf and fruit (bunch, berry and panel) revealed various result patterns in which more than 80% of these traits presented great divergent genotypes and therefore, they could be potentially incorporated to both local and regional breeding programs. Based on the UBGMA Jaccard’s similarity index and the constructed dendrogram, distinguishable genotypes as well as some cases of synonymies and homonymies clearly exist. A synonymy case seemed to be in two genotype-pairs which indeed showed genetic distances of less than 0.32 and 0.35 suggesting their close relatedness (possibly genetically identical). In addition, homonym cases also occur in the following pairs of “Halawani, Betuni’s, Fhesi, Roomi’s and Shami’s genotypes, in which each pair seems to be two distinctive genotypes. Based on our similarity results, number of local colored-table-grape genotypes might reduce which thereby, saving time and efforts for any future breeding program.