The Nordic Gene Bank's Prunus clone archive in Finland II - Local races ofplum

The morphological variation in 104 local races of plum (Prunus domestica su bsp. domestica L.) in the Nordic Gene Bank's Prunus clone archive in Palkan e, Southwest Finland was examined. Each tree was described using 37 charact eristics. On the basis of fruit characteristics the local races were classi fied into three main groups. The largest one was the red plum group, the ye llow plum group being the second largest. Victoria-type plums, which have n ot been reported to occur in Finland before and which resemble the English cultivar 'Victoria', make up the third group. Victoria-type plums proved to be fully and red plums partly self-compatible, whilst the yellow plums wer e self-incompatible. All the local races of plum were evaluated for their p ossible further use. Two of them were selected for commercial propagation.