Young progenies were appraised with relative bearing parents for values of specific morphological traits
related to earliness trait in order to defeat the juvenile period in breeding program. 38 Iranian local and
imported apple cultivars with different times of ripening, from very early to very late, selected as parents
to produce high yielding early descendents were formerly propagated on MM111 clonal rootstocks,
grown in the identical pedo-climatic conditions. So, all the parents were classified in 3 distinct classes of
earliness including very early–early ripening, mid ripening and late–very late ripening. The 3-year-old
True-to-Type plants of the same parents were exploited for comparative biennial studies of 10 definite
vegetative traits, defined as morphological markers, with their parents to estimate probable correlations
with earliness character as the target of the current apple breeding program. Stepwise regression analysis
revealed leaf length as the first trait entered to the model explaining approximately 45% of variations.
Maximum and minimum direct effects obtained from path analyses for ripening time were deduced 8.71
and
−7.47 for leaf length and leaf width, respectively. Maximum indirect effect belonged to leaf width
through leaf length (8.17). Cluster analysis according to UPGMA procedure and principal component
analysis (PCA) was used for classifying cultivars and assessment of the traits. According to the results of
cluster analysis, high variability among the groups of cultivar was determined by ripening time and origin
or geographic distribution. As a result, the early ripening cultivars were placed in opposite side of cluster
related to the late cultivars. Furthermore, four efficient factors (traits) including total leaf chlorophyll
content, leaf length, leaf width and pedicle length justified 87% of existing diversity based on factor
analysis.