Variability of oil content and its physico-chemical traits from five almond (Prunisdulcis) cultivars grown in Northern Morocco

In morocco,almond (prunusdulcis [mill.] d.a. webb) is the most important nut tree and the second after olive in terms of commercial production. in this work,we investigated almond oil content and its physico-chemical traits from five cultivars widely grown in northern morocco. oil quality determinations consisted of polyphenols content (pp),acid value (av),peroxide value (pv),and uv absorption coefficients (k232 and k270). for all the studied traits,cultivar was the main source of variability,although site and cultivar×site effects were also significant. mean values averaged between sites of oil content ranged from 49.50% dry weight of total kernel in fournatdebreznaud to 56.75% in marcona. low oil yielding cultivars with early maturity were the highest in terms of pp,resulting in a negative correlation between pp and oil content(r = -0.917***). k232 and k270 were significantly correlated to pv. principal component analysis (pca) allowed a better discrimination between the five cultivars and sites. in fact,70% of total variability was genotypic-dependent while 15% was attributed to environmental effect. oil samples analyzed were generally of excellent quality with low values of av,pv,k232,and k270 and higher values of pp. © 2017,university of mohammed premier oujda morocco.