Classification of cultivated barley (Hordeum vulgare). 2. Elaboration of cultivar groups

Abstract

Two barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) cultivar groups were established from 329 world-representative accessions of named cultivars scored for 37 morphometric characters. The two groups are similar to the popular division of two rowed and six rowed, one group containing mostly two-rowed barleys but also a few of the other kind and the second group mostly six rowed barleys together with some two-rowed. Both groups include naked and covered types, "iregular," "deficiens," and other types. The implications of the two groups for barley cultivar nomenclature are discussed. The two cultivar groups were discerned by the application of various hierarchical cluster analyses in combination with three different stopping rules as indicators to cluster numbers, supported by classificatory discriminant analysis with cross validation, and their relationships illustrated by canonical discriminant analyses.

The economic value of plant systematics in Canadian agriculture

“…For example, a study of agronomic characters of barley cultivars (Baum 1987) provided information of immediate use in choosing breeding stocks. Baum and Bailey (1987) established the taxonomic value of barley endosperm starch grains, which is important to brewers interested in selecting malting barley.…”