Breeding a new cultivar for larger fruit and high productivity in silvery mountain ash (Sorbus commixta)

This study was conducted to provide information for superior trees selection of silvery mountain ash (Sorbus commixta Hedl.) by comparing leaf and fruit characteristics in ten selected populations. Mt. Sungin at Ulleng island showed larger values in overall leaf characteristics. On the other hand, Mt. Halla at Jeju island showed smaller values for overall leaf characteristics among the populations. ANOVA tests showed that there were statistically significant differences in all leaf characteristics among the populations as well as individual trees within population. However, for fruit characteristics, there were statistically significant differences only among the populations at 1% level. Cluster analysis using single linkage method based on leaf and fruit characteristics showed that ten selected populations of silvery mountain ash in Korea could be clustered into three groups. The selection level based on major agronomic traits, which are the number of fruit per bunch (NFB) over 50, and fruit length (FL) and fruit width (FW) over 10 mm, and weight of 100 fruit (WF100) over 66 g, was applied on 100 sample trees, and five trees were finally selected. The selection effects of NFB, FL, FW and WF100 from selected five inidividuals were evaluated as 132, 151, 142, and 264% compared to the means of those 100 sample trees, respectively. Especially, 'Ulleung 2' showed excellent values that NFB and WF100 were 95EA and 69 g, respectively. A new cultivar with larger fruit and high productivity can be suggested.