Schiller, G., Department of Agronomy and Natural Resources, Agricultural Research Organization, Volcani Center, P.O. Box 6, Bet Dagan 50250, Israel
Herr, N., Department of Horticulture, Faculty of Agriculture, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, P.O. Box 12, Rehovot 76100, Israel
Shklar, G., Department of Agronomy and Natural Resources, Agricultural Research Organization, Volcani Center, P.O. Box 6, Bet Dagan 50250, Israel
Korol, L., Department of Agronomy and Natural Resources, Agricultural Research Organization, Volcani Center, P.O. Box 6, Bet Dagan 50250, Israel

Phenological observations have shown that about 10 to 15 percent of the Quercus ithaburensis Decne (Tabor oak) trees in any given population shed their leaves very late in the season, and that this phenomenon is a characteristic of the individual trees, irrespective of meteorological factors. The aim of this study was to elucidate whether phenological differences in the leaf shedding behavior of Q. ithaburensis trees are also genotypic. DNA, extracted from one-year-old leaves sampled from trees shedding late in the season, was subjected to RAPD-based PCR procedure using 20 primers. Comparisons between allele frequencies in the 16 natural populations and the "late in season leaf-shedding" population revealed large differences in 3 out of the 72 loci analyzed. © 2005 Science From Israel / LPPLtd.