Biodiversity of wild fruit species of Serbia

Abstract

Several field collecting trips in the 2009-2011 period confirmed that forest fruit species are an inexhaustible genofond of extremely important varieties that yield fruit of excellent quality and high nutritive value, with wide range of applications, including nutritional, medicinal and food production. The aim of this work was to develop long term interactive and integrated strategy for selection of wild fruit species through different breeding methods, as well as popularization of selected products and their integration into intensive fruit growing. The most important morphological, ecological, and biological characteristics were studied and presented for Cornus mas, Sambucus nigra, Morus sp. and Rosa sp. For each studied fruit species, advanced selections for cultivar release has been reported

Some Fruit Characteristics of Selected Cornelian Cherries (Cornus mas L.) from Montenegro

“…Fruit mass results of our selections were found between limits of previous studies (Bijelić et al 2008b;Bijelić et al 2010;Ercisli et al 2011;Hassanpour et al 2012). However, Yilmaz et al (2009) and Bošnjaković et al (2012) reported exceptional high fruit mass for some selections such as 9.17 g for 77-05 genotype in Turkey and 14.55 g for VR-10 genotype in Serbia, respectively. the researcher (0.75 and 3.10 %).…”

“…Montenegro is located in the south-western part of the Balkans, bordering the Adriatic Sea and it has continental Balkan climate inside and Mediterranean climate in Adriatic side (Mratinić and Kojić 1998;Ognjanov et al 2009;Bošnjaković et al 2012). The country ranks among the territories with the highest level of biological diversity in Europe mostly due to different environmental conditions, varying from cold and wet continental to dry and hot Mediterranean climate.…”

“…Thanks to the many studies that have confirmed the high nutritional value of the fruit of cornelian cherry, today the activities on the selection and breeding of cornelian cherry have intensified in many countries with rich natural population including Ukraine (Klimenko 2004), Serbia (Bijelić et al 2010;Bošnjaković et al 2012), Slovakia (Brindza 2006), Czech Republic (Dokoupil and Rezniček 2012), Iran (Hassanpour et al 2012), Turkey (Yalcinkaya 2009;Ercisli et al 2007;Ercisli et al 2011), Montenegro (Jaćimović et al 2003). As a result of these researches, the cornelian cherry commenced to be grown in plantations and it can be concluded that it will be a very promising fruit whose time is yet to come (Rop et al 2010).…”

Use of in vitro propagation of ‘Oblačinska’ sour cherry in rootstock breeding

“…The Balkan Peninsula is one of the most valuable secondary centers of genetic diversity and provides an inexhaustible gene pool for breeding work in Prunus sp. (Ognjanov et al, 2009;Bošnjaković et al, 2012). 'Oblačinska' sour cherry (Prunus cerasus L.) has been used for decades as a dwarfing rootstock for sweet and sour cherry in Serbia as a population cultivar, but it has never been of national interest to conserve and utilize germplasm for rootstock breeding .…”

Sources of resistance to eastern filbert blight in hazelnuts from the Republic of Georgia

“…The Balkan Peninsula has also been cited as an important center of diversity for C. avellana (Bošnjaković et al, 2012). Hazelnuts are an ancient crop in the Republic of Georgia, where commercial and backyard garden production is still common and the forests also hold wild trees, making it a promising location to be explored for hazelnut genetic resources.…”