Fruit Quality Characters of Myrtle (Myrtus communis L.) Selections: Review of a Domestication Process

Interest in myrtle (Myrtus communis L.) by food, cosmetics, and pharmaceutic industries
generated the integration of biomasses harvested from wild populations as raw materials with yields
of cultivated orchards. The domestication process is reviewed considering shoot, fruit, and leaf
biometric characters of selections obtained in three steps of the program. The first step started in
Sardinia (Italy) in 1995 by the analysis of wild germplasm variability. Seventy accessions were the
object of the first studied population of mother plants. Agamic propagation tests, as well quality
evaluations of fruit and leaves, were integrated into the first step. In the second step, a field of
comparison of forty-two agamically propagated cultivars functional to biomass production and to
food uses was planted and evaluated for phenotypic characters. In the third step, a new population
of twenty selections was obtained by open cross-pollination of some of the cultivars and further
phenotypic selection in seedling population. In this review, the three populations are compared for
biometric shoot, leaves and fruit characters, in order to verify the pressure of domestication process
on these traits. Wild populations showed high variability only partially used during the first step,
while the hybridization may create new variability for use in the genetic improvement of myrtle.