(10 Jun 2005)  Page(s) 807.  
 
...The obtained data reveals genetic similarity of a large group of 31 rose genotypes consisting of several
distinguishing sub-groups:
1. Twenty-four accession of R. damascena var. Kazanlik (phenotype trigintipetala) from the IRAP collection,
used for rose oil production. These plants were selected from different regions of the Rose Valley, Bulgaria, during the period 1924–1980, and part of them show differences in cold tolerance, flower yield, and content of rose oil.
2. Two rose accessions from the IRAP collection, originating from the region of Azaran, Iran, and the region of Aligar, India. Both genotypes were considered as R. damascena due to their morphology and the composition of the rose oil (Staikov and Kalaidjiev 1980).
3. Two old European Damask rose varieties, one of which, ‘Quatre Saisons’, plays an important role in old European rose improvement in the 19th century.
4. Three R. damascena accessions from the Roseraie du Val de Marne and PSL collections including the old
accession of var. Kazanlik, which had been known since 1689, and a R. damascena accession from the PSL collection originating from Turkey.
The identical microsatellite profiles of the group of oil and old European Damask rose genotypes strongly suggests that all of them originate from a single common ancestor. The obtained data suggests that clones of one genotype were spread in distant geographic regions of Europe and Asia and successfully vegetative propagated for centuries. The results of our study support the reported genetic uniformity of the R. damascena plants grown in Turkey (Agaoglu et al. 2000; Baydar et al. 2004) and the common origin of the old Damask rose varieties (Iwata et al. 2000). The reasons for the observed dominance of one ancestor Damask rose genotype are not clear. It could be result from its vigor and plasticity, allowing successful adaptation to diverse climate and soil conditions or from directed long-term propagation and cultivation of one superior variety because of the scent or the superior quality of rose oil and water. The claims that the roses from this genotype were mentioned in the old Greek literature (Hurst 1941) and cultivated by the Romans and found in Pompei (Krussmann 1962) support the second assumption. The obtained data from the present study also demonstrates that the entire rose oil industry in Bulgaria is based on a very narrow genepool consisting of a set of well performing clones. Similar results were reported earlier for the oil rose genetic resources in Turkey (Agaoglu et al. 2000; Baydar et al. 2004).