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Great morphological diversity in wild apples (Malus spp.) from a region of central Spain (Guadarrama and Ayllón mountain ranges)

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Abstract

The crab apple tree (Malus sylvestris (L.) Mill.) is a European indigenous species currently listed as endangered due to habitat fragmentation and cross back pollination with the apple tree (M. domestica Borkh.). There are some morphological studies on crab apples, but the state of that species remains unknown in Spain. The aim of this work was to describe morphologically crab apples and feral apples in mountainous areas from central Spain, to select morphological markers which better discriminate between species and to detect possible hybrids. To do so, we phenotyped a total of 355 Malus individuals from the Guadarrama and Ayllón mountain ranges and two wild populations from other Spanish regions through 68 morphological descriptors (8 in 1-year old shoots, 15 in leaves, 16 in flowers and 29 in fruits) from 2016 to 2019. We added 15 cultivated apples from the IMIDRA gene back, both traditional cultivars (9) and international references (6) to anchor our analysis. As a result, we found a high morphological diversity in the sampling area, highlighting that feral apples shown larger diversity than crab apples. In addition, no single descriptor perfectly discriminates between species, as variances in the morphological traits used to overlap. Nevertheless, pubescence, number of petals, fruit size, shape and fruit cavities deserve further research. Gene flux may exist in the area and could be responsible to such overlap, because the 25% of the feral trees and the 21% of crab apple trees shown intermediate shapes.

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Acknowledgements

A. Arnal is very grateful with those professionals and the inhabitants from the rural areas that helped him in the location and sampling of the trees analysed in this research.

Funding

This research was supported by the research projects FP16-ETNOB and FP17-MZ, both funded from the government of Comunidad de Madrid (Spain). A. Arnal predoctoral contract was funded by the National Institute for Agricultural and Food Research and Technology (FPI-INIA 2015).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departamento de Investigación Agroalimentaria, IMIDRA, Autovía A-2, Km 38.2, Apdo. 127, 28800, Alcalá de Henares, Madrid, Spain

    Alberto Arnal, Almudena Lázaro & Javier Tardío

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  1. Alberto Arnal
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  2. Almudena Lázaro
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  3. Javier Tardío
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Contributions

AA, JT and AL designed the research. AA sampled the accessions, performed the research, analysed the data and wrote the manuscript. All authors contributed in its revision.

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Correspondence to Alberto Arnal.

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Arnal, A., Lázaro, A. & Tardío, J. Great morphological diversity in wild apples (Malus spp.) from a region of central Spain (Guadarrama and Ayllón mountain ranges). Plant Physiol. Rep. 28, 124–141 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40502-023-00712-0

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