Fruit Quality Characters of Myrtle ( Myrtus communis L.) Selections: Review of a Domestication Process

Silvia Medda and Maurizio Mulas
Additional contact information
Silvia Medda: Department of Agricultural Science, University of Sassari, Via De Nicola 9, 07100 Sassari, Italy
Maurizio Mulas: Department of Agricultural Science, University of Sassari, Via De Nicola 9, 07100 Sassari, Italy

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 16, 1-16

Abstract: Interest in myrtle ( Myrtus communis L.) by food, cosmetics, and pharmaceutic industries generated the integration of biomasses harvested from wild populations as raw materials with yields of cultivated orchards. The domestication process is reviewed considering shoot, fruit, and leaf biometric characters of selections obtained in three steps of the program. The first step started in Sardinia (Italy) in 1995 by the analysis of wild germplasm variability. Seventy accessions were the object of the first studied population of mother plants. Agamic propagation tests, as well quality evaluations of fruit and leaves, were integrated into the first step. In the second step, a field of comparison of forty-two agamically propagated cultivars functional to biomass production and to food uses was planted and evaluated for phenotypic characters. In the third step, a new population of twenty selections was obtained by open cross-pollination of some of the cultivars and further phenotypic selection in seedling population. In this review, the three populations are compared for biometric shoot, leaves and fruit characters, in order to verify the pressure of domestication process on these traits. Wild populations showed high variability only partially used during the first step, while the hybridization may create new variability for use in the genetic improvement of myrtle.

Keywords: myrtle germplasm; phenotypic variability; wild populations; cultivar selections; hybrids (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/16/8785/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/16/8785/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:16:p:8785-:d:609433

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().