Screening of some native and foreign accessions of spinach for spring culture in Isfahan

Spinach is one of the most important green leafy vegetables (Spinacia oleracea L.). The qualitative and quantitative traits of the spinach depends on the weather conditions. Screening the foreign accession compared with the Iranian ones is necessary for breeding purposes. In order to study the vegetative characteristics of 44 endemic and foreign accessions, an experiment was conducted in a randomized complete block design (RCBD) with three replications and 18 observations in spring, 2018. Quantitative and qualitative parameters of spinach were evaluated based on descriptors investigated by Bioversity International Plant Genetic Resources Institute. In general, the intensity of the green color in the leaf of foreign accessions was higher than that of the endemic spinach. In this study, the highest yield belonged to “Viroflay” (71.224 ton/ha) among foreign accessions and among Iranian accessions, “Varamin88” (52.6 ton/ha) had the highest performance. Maximum and Minimum yields from 71224 to 8870 (kg/ha) belonged to accessions “Viroflay” and “Virginia savoy blight”, respectively. “D’inverno” accession showed the longest period of spring growth (89.66 days) and among the Iranian accessions, “Hamadan2” (77 days), “Varamin88” (72 days) and “Varamin Prickly” (69.66 days) showed the longest growth in Isfahan environmental conditions, respectively. The highest percentage of female plants was observed in “Monatol” accession. Among the endemic accessions, “Lorestan5” showed the highest female plant percentage. Results of this study showed that Iranian accessions such as “Kashan”, “Lorestan6” and “Varamin Advanced Prickly” are suitable for mechanical harvesting due to their plant form, leaf and petiole attitude and can be used for plant breeding purposes. According to the cluster analysis, the accessions in this study were divided into two large groups (group I and group II), according to which, “Varamin88” accession was placed beside the foreign outstanding accession in cluster I. .