investigation of morphological diversity among native populations of walnut (juglans regia) in golestan province, iran

walnut is a plant belongs to juglandaceae family. among 21 species, of thejuglans genus, the persian walnut (juglans regia l.) is recognized as the bestspecies. the main aim of the current research work was identification of geneticdiversity among persian walnut species in golestan province, iran. morphologicaltraits used as an approach to evaluate 96 trees which belonged to five nativepopulations. all morphological characters of leaf, flower and fruits were recorded.significant differences was seen among these populations in respect to character ofnut with husk and without husk. this range was between 14.88 to 55.88 gr for theformer and 5.64 to 25.91 gr for the latest one. also the percent of kernel was in arange of 19.95 to 50.19. further results indicated a negative correlation betweenhigh altitude with protogeny and percentage oil of kernels. reversely, there was apositive correlation between altitude and protein content of the kernels. otherphenological traits such as seed biophysics and seed morphology (according toipgri and upov descriptors) were evaluated within this study.