In this research, twenty-two selected almond hybrids with their parents ‘A1-99’ (drought-sensitive) and ‘Tuono’ (relatively tolerant against drought), were investigated for screening drought tolerance using some morphological and physiological traits. This research was carried out in a complete randomized design with three replications at the Temperate Fruit Research Center of Horticultural Sciences Research Institute (HSRI) in years of 2014 and 2015. The results showed that by applying severe drought stress (30% FC), some morphological and physiological characteristics such as chlorophyll index (ChI), relative water content (RWC) of leaf decreased, while electrolyte leakage (EL) and Quantum efficiency of the photosystem II (Fv/Fm) increased. According to results, there were significant differences among genotypes, for example range of Fv/Fm among the selected hybrids varied from 550 to 879. Frequency of drought tolerance showed that 77. 27% of hybrids were susceptible to relatively susceptible and 22.72% were tolerant to relatively tolerant. Finally, according to the results from this study, ‘DT19’ hybrid was recognized as the most sensitive and ‘DT1’ hybrid was known as the most tolerant hybrid that could be introduced as promising and tolerant to drought stress for utilizing in the breeding programs. Manuscript profile

In this study flowering time and other important morphologic traits were evaluated during two years in F1 almond progenies of seventy two seedlings from cross between the intermediate flowering Italian cultivar ‘Tuono’ and the extra-late blooming Iranian cultivar ‘Shahrood-12’. A modified-bulk segregant analysis in combination with the application of the 140 RAPD primers, 87 nuclear SSR markers spanning the whole almond genome and 5 chloroplast SSR markers, were used to identify molecular markers linked to flowering time. Results showed a quantitative inheritance of this trait in the studied progenies. The seedlings showed a wide range of flowering dates between both progenitors although some of these descendants were earlier in flowering than the early progenitor ‘Tuono’. Results showed that among RAPD markers evaluated, BA-17600,1000, BC-05320, BC-06800, BC-141750, BC-17600, BC-20250, OPC-05850 and OPC-09700,1100 markers were linked to late blooming time. In addition, markers BA-04720, BB-10630,BC-092000, BD-12510andOPC-12350 were linked to early blooming time. Two microsatellite loci (CPPCT008 and EPPCU2584) were also found to be tightly linked to flowering time. After construction the genetic map of population, QTL analysis was performed for blooming time. QTL analysis showed that OPC-09700,1100 and BA-17600,1000, markers were respectively located in 2 and 4 cM distance from one of the late flowering time loci. Also the BA-04720marker was located in 3 cM distances from one of the loci controlling early flowering time. These results are applicable in almond breeding programs for markers assisted strategy. The application of these results to other Prunus species has been also discussed. Manuscript profile