Sour cherries are rich in anthocyanins and have a relatively high antioxidant activity and potential health benefits in terms of prevention of many diseases, like, cancers and diabetes. Iran has one of the richest germphlasm resources as well as relatively wide variety of Cherry trees and Creases. Increasing quality of these trees is one of the goals in breading programs. The goals of this study are, (1)Get better understanding of indigenous genotype characteristic in production of fruit juice, (2) Evaluating differences between domestic and foreign commercial cultivars in terms of physico-chemical properties of cherry’s juice and concentrate, (3)Comparing changes in physico-chemical properties of cherry juice during processing.Also, a wide variation in fruit colour and sensory quality were observed within the studied genotypes. It was found that Iranian selections such as 5173, 2732,5201,5202,5209 5239 generally scored higher for desirable fruit characteristics across this range of parameters than existing commercial genotypes used as the control comparisons. Thus, they can be considered as promising genotypes for further evaluation in cherry breeding programmes, as well as being potentially useful for the cherry juice/concentrate industry. In second step, the effect of processing of sour cherry juices on some physico-chemical characters of 3 selected genotypes that were concentrated by vacuum evaporation (osmotic evaporation), was studied. . According the results, the control genotype was in better conditions than the indigenous genotypes. Results showed that osmotic evaporation causes slight differences in PH, whereas total phenolic compounds, titrable acidity, total solved solid and total anthocyanin content were increased during processing. A cluster dendrogram gave a clear separation between the Iranian sour cherries and commercial genotypes and showed existing synonymies and homonymies. Keywords : Sour cherry, Germplasm, Promising cultvars, Anthocyanin, Antioxidants, Phenolic compound, Cluster dendrogram.
