Morphological variability and genetic diversity within Latvian and Swedish sweet cherry collections

Forty nine sweet cherry accessions at the Latvia State Institute of Fruit-Growing (Dobele) and ninety one at the Division of Horticultural Genetics and Plant Breeding at Balsgard, Department of Crop Sciences, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU-Balsgard) were used for the analysis of morphological variability and genetic diversity by means of multivariate statistic analyses. Both applied statistical approaches (cluster and principal component analysis) showed adequate grouping of accessions according to morphological characterization. Multivariate analysis showed the most important traits for sweet cherry accession grouping were tree architecture and fruit traits, which should therefore be considered in further sweet cherry genetic resource characterization. Multiple parameter analysis of sweet cherry traits increased the value of phenotypical data and created the basis for common analysis of phenotypical and genetical data.