Investigation of general combining ability of male and female trees of Pistacia atlantica for selecting the best parents for breeding purposes

Eight male and 15 female trees of Pistacia atlantica were selected at Arsenjan forest (Marvdasht, Iran) for crossbreeding experiments., Flowers of the selected females were isolated by transparent paper pockets during March, 1998. Flowers of each female tree were pollinated with pollens of the selected male trees. Produced seeds were collected during October. Then the seeds were planted in the nursery in 1999, and several characters including germination percentage, oil content, establishment, plant height and trunk diameter were measured. General combining ability of the parents were determined based on the measured characters. Results showed that according to general combining ability, the male parents, number 5, 4, 6, 8 and the female parent numbers 2, 4, 3, 8, 10, 14 and 15 had the highest roles on expression of the characters. Cluster analysis of general combining ability of male and female parents showed two categories of male with 80 and two categories of female with 70 percent similarities, respectively. The results showed that the highest and lowest oil percent with average values of 40.72 and 20.02 belonged to crosses 5*2 and 7*6 respectively.