KINSHIP ANALYSIS OF APPLE CULTIVARS USING NUMERICAL TECHNIQUES FOR MULTICHARACTERISTIC EVALUATION

Phenotypic similarities in 68 apple cultivars were studied using 114 morphological and agronomical characters with two rootstock /M 9 and A 2/ replications. The original data matrix with 10 replications for each character for each rootstock subset treated separately were computerized by three different methods of numerical analysis. The hierarchical cluster analyses of the complete data gave unsatisfactory results, apparently due to frequent cross relationships between newer cultivars. When most of these cultivars were excluded, such a limited set gave a quite stable cultivar arrangement. The value of the phenetic proximity - "d_ik" which was calculated for every pair of cultivars proved to be a good measure for identification of a cultivar and for estimation of the kinship between different cultivars. To each cultivar the others were lined up according to the growing value of d_ik. The least mutual kinship was found for the following cultivars: 'Ananas Reinette', 'Cornish Gilliflower', 'Emneth Early', 'Kandil Sinap', 'Spätblühender Taffetapfel', 'Sudetská' and 'White Transparent'.