Identification of the tolerant pomegranate genotypes for the aril browning or aril paleness disorder

Aril browning disorder (AB) is a physiological injury in pomegranate (Punica granatum L.) fruit that critically decreased fruit quality and market acceptability in recent years. This experiment was carried out to explore and select tolerant cultivars and genotypes among the major Iranian pomegranate germplasm at Saveh Pomegranate Collection Orchard (SPCO). Pomegranate physico-chemical fruit traits including fruit weight, dimension, volume, and fruit skin color, aril color, electrical conductivity (EC), pH, total soluble solids (TSS), juice color absorbance, and titratable acidity (TA) of the 257 genotypes were recorded. The results obtained a considerable variation in the AB disorder among the studies genotypes, in which the intensity of the AB disorder strongly was related to the fruit attributes for each pomegranate genotype. Also, about 16.34% of the studied pomegranate genotypes did not have any AB disorder symptoms, whereas about 66.93% of them showed moderate to severe susceptible properties to the AB disorder symptoms. The aril attributes for fruits of the non-affected genotypes (NAG) are the bright and shiny surface, solid texture, and frequently red color; whereas the aril attributes for fruits of the severely affected genotypes (SAG) are the very dark surface, injured texture, deformed structure, and often creamy color. Generally, the average fruit weight, fruit dimension, and pH of the fruit juice for the (NAG) are significantly smaller than the (SAG); although, the amount of TA content, taste, and juice color absorbance value of the fruit juice in (NAG) are significantly more than the (SAG). In our study, the nine pomegranate genotypes such as ‘Alak e Shirin e Saveh’, ‘Danea e Ghermez e Marivan’, ‘Torsh e Minab’, ‘Torsh e Sory e Pavea’, ‘MikhoshShabestar’, ‘Genotype 607’, ‘Genotype 642’, ‘Genotype 30’ and ‘Genotype 481’ produced relatively good fruit quality without any AB disorder symptoms. To resolve the AB issue and improve the sensitive cultivars especially under the phenomenon of climate change using the bearing pomegranate genotype are key sources.