Plasticity of fruit and oil traits in olive among different environments

Abstract

Olive is a long-living perennial species with a wide geographical distribution, showing a large45 genetic and phenotypic variation in its growing area. There is an urgent need to uncover how olive46 phenotypic traits and plasticity can change regardless of the genetic background.47 A two-year study was conducted, based on the analysis of fruit and oil traits of 113 cultivars from48 five germplasm collections established in Mediterranean Basin countries and Argentina. Fruit and49 oil traits plasticity, broadsense heritability and genotype by environment interaction were50 estimated.51 From variance and heritability analyses, it was shown that fruit fresh weight was mainly under52 genetic control, whereas oleic/(palmitic + linoleic) acids ratio was regulated by the environment and53 genotype by environment interaction had the major effect on oil content. Among the studied54 cultivars, different level of stability was observed, which allowed ranking the cultivars based on55 their plasticity for oil traits. High thermal amplitude, the difference of low and high year values of56 temperature, negatively affected the oil content and the oleic acid percentage.57 Information derived from this work will help to direct the selection of cultivars with the highest58 global fitness averaged over the environments rather than the highest fitness in each environment59 separately.