Morphological diversity and a germplasm survey of three wild Pistacia species in Turkey

The common wild Pistacia species in Turkey are P. terebinthus L., P. atlantica Desf. and P. eurycarpa Yalt. A total of 65 Pistacia genotypes from different parts of Turkey were surveyed and characterized phenotypically and morphologically for this study: 10 P. eurycarpa genotypes from Siirt and Gaziantep provinces, 45 P. atlantica and 10 P. terebinthus genotypes from Adana, Aydin and Manisa provinces. Their seeds were sampled and seedlings were produced to characterize as compared to the their leaves with leaf traits of maternal trees. A total of 30 characters (four tree, 19 leaf and seven nut) were used to characterize this collection, including ten quantitative characters and 20 qualitative characters. Both at the inter- and intra-specific level, the 65 genotypes displayed high diversity. Several characters were found to be diagnostic at the species level among the three species. Correlations between characters were found for each species separately. Nut weight was positively correlated with terminal leaflet length and with nut dimensions in all three species. Morphological description of several Pistacia genotypes revealed inter-specific hybrids.