This study was carried out during two successive seasons of 2017 and 2018 to evaluate some pomegranate cultivars grown at Assiut Governorate, Egypt. Three local Egyptian pomegranate (Punica granatum L.) cultivars, namely Assiuty, Assiuty-1 and Nab-Elgamal compared to Manfalouty cv. which is one of the commercial cultivars in Egypt. Vegetative growth’ traits, yield components and fruit quality as well as numerical evaluation were investigated.
Growth traits were determined (shoot and leaf traits) and yield components (fruit set percentage, yield/tree (kg) and fruit cracking percentage) as well as physical fruit traits (weight, dimension, grains percentage and juice percentage). The chemical traits such as total soluble solids, titratable acidity, reducing sugars as well as vitamin C and anthocyanin contents were assessed.
The obtained results indicated that there is a wide variation in each of these traits among the studied cultivars. Assiuty-1 cultivar had the highest values of most studied traits compared to the other studied cultivars, respectively. On other hand, the least values of these traits were recorded of Nab-Elgamal cultivar. As the numerical evaluation of these studied cultivars, it could be arranged in a descendingly order as follows: Manfalouty, Assiuty, Assiuty-1 and Nab-El-gamal cultivar.
The inter simple sequence repeats (ISSR) marker was used to assess the genetic relationship among the pomegranate cultivars. UPGMA-cluster analysis discriminated the four tested cultivars based on data of ISSR at 0.76 similarity. Assiuty and Assiuty-1 cultivars showed the highest value of similarity (0.87) on the dendrogram, both cultivars showed a good relationship with Nab Elgamal cultivar by showing an average value of similarity (0.82). While, Manfalouty cultivar showed low similarity (0.76) with the rest of cultivars and was separated in a single branch on the dendrogram. This grouping showed a clear genetic relationship among the tested cultivars, which could be used in breeding and improvement programs of pomegranate.
These results revealed that Assiuty and Assiuty-1 are considered promising cultivars to obtain a high yield with good fruit quality compared to Nab-El-Gamal.