Rosa Romana apple: A heritage of the apple germoplasm of the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines to be recovered and promoted

•Pomological and molecular characterization of 47 accessions of ‘Rosa Romana’ cultivars were investigated.•Significant differences were observed between the mountain and plain cultivars for the measured characters.•The clustering dendrogram (UPGMA) based on the obtained data showed two main clusters for the ‘Rosa Romana’ samples.