Diversity of some quantitative characters of Oriental sweet gum (Liquidambar orientalis Mill.) for five-year-old seedlings

Eighteen populations were sampled from the distribution area of Oriental sweet gum. The populations were evaluated by molecular markers method and chosen nine out of 18 population (Bozda？, ？etibeli, De？irmenyan？, Günlükba？？, Günnücek, K？yra, K？yce？iz, Yata？an, Y？lanl？) in terms of genetic diversity. Seeds were collected from 16-27 mother trees of these nine populations. Using seedlings grown with collected seeds, a common garden test was established in 2009. Randomized complete block design with the single-tree plot was used for the common garden test. A number of the block was 25 in the common garden test. A total of 223 families were included in each block, and the fifth-year height, breast height diameter, and crown diameter were measured. Statistically significant differences were found between populations for all the traits. When looking at different groups, Bozdag and Yatagan population were different from other populations in general. There was also a difference between Bozdag and Yatagan populations. The genetic distances between the populations and the neighborhood tree which were formed by genetic distances also showed that the most different populations were Bozda？ and Yata？an. The individual heritabilities and their standard errors were 0.54 ± 0.09, 0.62 ± 0.09 and 0.40 ± 0.10 for the height, breast height diameter, and crown diameter respectively, the additive genetic variation coefficients were also 13.4%, 9.1%, and 7.1%, respectively. The findings were evaluated in terms of gene conservation