Characterization of pomegranate (Punica granatum L.) genotypes collected in Puglia region, Southeastern Italy

tThe popularity of pomegranate (Punica granatum L.) is increasing among growers and consumers due toits nutritional value, nutraceutical properties and adaptability to different soils and climate conditions.Pomegranate is characterized by a large variability in terms of domestic, wild and ornamental genotypes,and for seed-hardness, juiciness, rind and aril color, sugar/acid ratio, antioxidant activity, fatty acids, phe-nols and arils anthocyanins content. Evaluation of pomegranate germplasm has usually been performedusing fruit morphological and chemical traits, whereas genetic studies received less attention. The aimof the present work was: (a) to carry on a morphological and biochemical characterization of a set ofpomegranate genotypes collected in Puglia region, Southeastern Italy and (b) to investigate genetic diver-sity by microsatellite markers. A two-year study was carried out for the evaluation of 13 pomegranategenotypes, sweet and sour, of Italian and Israeli origin. Significant differences were observed for many ofthe parameters investigated, in particular fruit and aril size and maturity index of fruits, titratable acidity,total polyphenol content and antioxidant activity of juices and oil content of seeds. Genetic analysis on thepomegranate collection identified 53 SSR loci able to distinguish the different genotypes and to estimategenetic distances. In the dendrogram, pomegranate genotypes clustered according to both geographicalorigin and morphological–chemical traits (skin color, size, taste and polyphenolic content), suggestingthat SSR markers could be effective to detect the genetic diversity of pomegranate, thus facilitating theexploitation of this fruit species germplasm. In general, morphological, chemical and genetic parametersallowed to clearly distinguish the Italian genotypes from the Israeli ones.