Physicochemical characterization of fruit quality traits in a German sour cherry collection

Several commercially relevant physicochemical fruit characteristics (fruit weight, fruit firmness, juice color intensity, soluble solid content, titratable acidity) were studied for three years during the research period 2005–2009 in 78 sour cherry genotypes of the Fruit genebank of the Julius Kühn-Institut in Dresden, Germany. A high phenotypic variability with significant differences between cultivars has been found for each of the fruit quality traits studied. Dependent on the trait, a certain number of cultivars were observed that showed lower or higher values than the commercially grown cultivars involved in this study. The favorable characteristics of a number of cultivars were consolidated by lower-year-by year variations in comparison to those of some commercial cultivars. The diversity of the physicochemical traits in the germplasm evaluated represents a basis for the selective choice of genotypes for commercial growing and breeding programs.