Assessment of the phenotypic diversity of wild cherry (Prunus avium L.) populations and halfsib lines by multivariate statistical analyses

Abstract

Wild cherry (Prunus avium L.) is a multi-purpose tree species with great ecological and economic importance for European forestry. Evaluating this species phenotypic diversity and quantitative traits characterization is of great importance to define its genetic resources conservation and breeding strate-gies. In this work, variations of physiological, biochemical, ana-tomical and morphological traits of one-year-old wild cherry seedlings were evaluated within and among populations to distinguish and characterize their phenotypic portfolio. We observed significant differences at the intra- and inter-popula-tion levels considering both biochemical and physiological leaf traits, whereas differences in morphological and anatomical traits were found to be significant only among half-sib lines within populations (i.e. intra-population level). With a multiva-riate approach, we explored the inter-population specificity and found out that the tiered approach spanning from organ morphology, across physiological scale, to the biochemical level gave out enough power to discriminate between diffe-rent populations, and their acquisition and resource-use stra-tegies. Moreover, stepwise discriminative analysis showed that radical scavenger capacity against 2,2'-azino-bis(3-ethylbenzo-thiazoline-6-sulfonic acid) (ABTS•+) and water-use efficiency contributed to discrimination of studied populations to the lar-gest extend. Lastly, our study highlights the robustness of cer-tain functional traits, such as ABTS•+, water-use efficiency, net photosynthesis, total flavonoid content, width of stomata guard cell, and stomatal aperture length, which could be con-sidered as a proxy to discriminate between wild cherry popula-tions and assess phenotypic diversity.