Current consumer trends require food products with „healthy image“. This has led to an increased interest in traditional fruit cultivars and related products. Traditional apple cultivars in Bosnia and Herzegovina are a valuable source of desirable genetic characteristics including important pomological, nutritional and technological characteristics of the fruit. The sugar and organic acid profile of fruit is an important component of chemical composition and provides valuable information regarding the authenticity of fruit products. They also have an effect on the sensory properties and nutritional value of fruit products. Ten traditional and two international commercial apple cultivars were analyzed, using HPLC, for individual sugars (sucrose, glucose, fructose and sorbitol) and individual organic acids (malic, citric, shikimic and fumaric acids). Fructose was the most abundant among sugars that were quantified in apple fruit, followed by glucose, sucrose and sorbitol. Malic acid was predominated among the individual organic acids in both traditional and international apple cultivars, followed by citric, fumaric and shikimic acid. It was also found that cultivar had a significant influence on individual sugars and organic acid in the fruit. Generally, traditional apple cultivars had higher sugar content and lower organic acid in relation to international ones and with respect of this they are sweet and good for direct consumption and “pekmez” production.

Jabuka predstavlja vocnu kulturu sa najvecim brojem opisanih monogenih odlika, sto je cini idealnom vrstom za predstavljanje najnovijih saznanja i dostignuca iz podrucja genetike i oplemenjivanja bilja. U udžbeniku su obrađeni sljedeci glavni segmenti: osnovne karakteristike biologije jabuke, genetski mehanizmi kontrole bitnih komercijalnih svojstava, genetske osnove otpornosti, tradicionalne i moderne tehnike u stvaranju novih kultivara i podloga jabuke, primjena molekularnih markera u oplemenjivanju jabuke te genetski resursi.

There is a need for classifying and conserving local apple cultivars from two main regions in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BH P < 0.001). Analysis of the genetic structure indicates that overall, approximately half of the local apple cultivars from Sarajevo andeasternBosnia (52% and 45%,respectively)grouped in the RPP1 consisting mainly out of international reference cultivars, whereas the other half grouped in the RPP2 with traditional B&H reference cultivars. Both neighbor joining (NJ) cluster analysis based on Bruvo genetic distance and factorial correspondence analysis (FCA) confirmed the results of the genetic structure analysis. The molecular data show that both apple accessions from Sarajevo and from eastern Bosnia represent an interesting source of diversity, which needs to be conserved.

In order to identify possible mislabeling of the apple accession maintained ex situ in Srebrenik and to gain insight into the genetic structure of the conserved germplasm, 14 accessions from the collection were genotyped using 10 SSR (Simple Sequence Repeats) markers. Obtained SSR profiles were then added to an existing database constructed for previously characterized 24 traditional and 13 international, reference apple cultivars maintained at the same collection. Bayesian analysis implemented in the STRUCTURE program grouped 42 out of 51 analyzed apple accessions (38 traditional and 13 international) into three RPPs (reconstructed panmictic populations) with probability of membership qI higher than 75%. Almost all international, reference cultivars grouped in RPP3, whereas traditional B&H cultivars from the Srebrenik collection grouped in all three RPPs. Large and significant differentiations between all three individual RPPs were detected through the analyses of molecular variance and confirmed with FCA (factorial correspondence analyses). NJ cluster analysis, based on the Bruvo genetic distance, revealed that out of 38 traditional B&H apple cultivars, analyzed in the study, ‘Ljepocvjetka’, ‘Bobovec’ and ‘Bobovec J’ grouped closest to the international reference cultivars. Available date indicates that unlike a large number of B&H apple cultivars which were introduced during the reign of the Ottoman Empire, ‘Ljepocvjetka’ and ‘Bobovec’ were probably introduced at a later date. Cluster analyses also enabled the detection of one synonym and three homonyms within the collection. In four cases, previously conducted identification based on phenotypic analyses was confirmed by genetic analyses. Results of the structure analyses indicate a heterogeneous genetic structure of the analyzed accessions. This characteristic of the B&H apple germplasm could be useful for future breeding programs.

In order to analyze morphological characteristics of locally cultivated common bean landraces from Bosnia and Herzegovina (B&H), thirteen quantitative and qualitative traits of 40 P. vulgaris accessions, collected from four geographical regions (Northwest B&H, Northeast B&H, Central B&H and Sarajevo) and maintained at the Gene bank of the Faculty of Agriculture and Food Sciences in Sarajevo, were examined. Principal component analysis (PCA) showed that the proportion of variance retained in the first two principal components was 54.35%. The first principal component had high contributing factor loadings from seed width, seed height and seed weight, whilst the second principal component had high contributing factor loadings from the analyzed traits seed per pod and pod length. PCA plot, based on the first two principal components, displayed a high level of variability among the analyzed material. The discriminant analysis of principal components (DAPC) created 3 discriminant functions (DF), whereby the first two discriminant functions accounted for 90.4% of the variance retained. Based on the retained DFs, DAPC provided group membership probabilities which showed that 70% of the accessions examined were correctly classified between the geographically defined groups. Based on the taxonomic distance, 40 common bean accessions analyzed in this study formed two major clusters, whereas two accessions Acc304 and Acc307 didn’t group in any of those. Acc360 and Acc362, as well as Acc324 and Acc371 displayed a high level of similarity and are probably the same landrace. The present diversity of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s common been landraces could be useful in future breeding programs.