Genetic variability in modern crops is limited due to domestication and selection processes. Genetic variation in eight Bulgarian tomato varieties and breeding lines (variety Plovdivska karotina, variety IZK Alya, L21β, L53β, L1140, L1116, L975, L984) differing in their morphological and biochemical composition was assessed using a highly efficient and low-cost fluorescent simple sequence repeat (SSR) genotyping platform. Genotyping was conducted with 165 publicly available microsatellite markers developed from different research groups under a number of projects in tomato (SOL Genomics SSRs, Kazusa TGS and TES, SLM, TMS and LEMDDNa) among which only five (3.03%) failed to amplify the expected PCR fragments. Of the remaining markers, 81 (50.62%) were polymorphic in the whole collection of eight genotypes. Among the marker groups used, SLM markers were most polymorphic, followed by TMS and SOL Genomics SSR markers. The total number of amplified alleles was 299, with a mean of 1.869; and the average polymorphic information content (PIC) was 0.196. The genetic diversity within the collection was relatively low (0.2222). Nei's genetic distance varied from 0.0953 to 0.3992. Cluster analysis using the un-weighted pair group method with arithmetic mean (UPGMA) method indicated that the studied tomato genotypes are grouped in four main clusters, which is to some extent consistent with the morpho- and hemo-types of the studied tomatoes. Variety IZK Alya (cherry type) and two of the breeding lines (L1140, L1116) formed three separate and more distant clusters. The fourth cluster includes the other five genotypes. The observed grouping of these genotypes in two sub-clusters reflects their similar morphological and biochemical composition. The genetic distance information from this study might be useful for further implementation of breeding strategies and crosses among these inbred lines.

The ongoing climate change creates serious concerns about how tree species will behave under new environmental condi­tions. Common beech (Fagus sylvatica L.), a main and important tree species in Europe, will also be affected by the coming changes. One possibility to test the adaptability of this tree species is to perform provenance tests, transplanting trees from northern areas to warmer and drier places, and to investigate their behavior over a long period of time (transfer experiments). This work describes such an experiment. A provenance test was established in April 2010 with two-year-old seedlings from 8 provenances of beech - 5 from Germany (Bavaria) and 3 from Bulgaria. Our purposes were to determine differences in the manifestation of the spring and autumn phenophases from beech of German and Bulgarian provenances and to seek a relationship between geographical coordinates and altitude of the same provenances and timing of leaf flushing and leaf coloring/shedding. In this experiment we examined leaf unfolding and leaf coloring/shedding in two growing periods (2013 and 2016). We found that the Bulgarian provenances flushed earlier in comparison with the German ones in both growing periods. No statistically significant clustering of the Bulgarian and German provenances during leaf coloring/shedding for the second period of observation was found. Longitude had the most important influence on flushing. A linear relationship between the mean date of leaf coloring and the longitude and latitude was determined, but only for the first growing period (2013), when eastern provenances had later leaf coloring, while more northern provenances had earlier leaf coloring.

The investigation deals with in vitro clonal propagation of L. aestivum L. (Summer Snowflake), a threatened Amaryllidaceae plant species in Bulgaria used in the pharmaceutical industry as raw material for production of galanthamine-based medicines. Plants of known origin and with different alkaloid profile were taken from the living collection of the Institute of Botany, Sofia. Bulbs were used to initiate in vitro cultures and 24 clones were multiplied. The influence of the clone origin on the propagation coefficient, shoot and bulblet morphology, alkaloid profile and content of galanthamine, lycorine, and four related alkaloids was evaluated. Clones kept stable alkaloid profiles and for most of them, high regeneration rates were noted. Galanthamine content of some clones was commensurable with that of Bulgarian populations of L. aestivum of commercial importance. Five clones: four galanthamine-type and one lycorine-type were selected as promising for further investigation.

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