Genetic variability in agronomic traits of a germplasm collection of hulless barley

Abstract

ABSTRACT. Germplasm collections represent an important genetic source for crop improvements. In this study, 220 accessions of hulless barley were collected worldwide and their genetic diversity was investigated. Sixteen agronomic traits, including yield and yield components, grain morphology, leaf size, plant height, and lodging resistance, were assessed under field conditions. All studied traits exhibited large variation. Thousand seed weight determined yield, and was strongly affected by spike length and spike number. Four varieties, Gaoyuan Zao 1, Fu 8-4, Zang 0331, and Harry (WDM00618), showed high resistance to lodging. Significant correlations among the traits were observed, indicating trait interactions. Life cycle had the smallest coefficient of variation (CV) among native, foreign, and improved varieties, whereas the CV of cellulose content was more or less balanced. Among the accessions from domestic and foreign germplasm, the CV for life cycle remained the lowest, whereas those for carbon/nitrogen and spike number per plant were the highest. Interestingly, higher genetic diversity was observed in domestic than in foreign accessions. Together, our findings demonstrate that there is abundant diversity in worldwide hulless barley germplasm collections, which would be useful when introducing 18357 Genetic variability in hulless barley ©FUNPEC-RP www.funpecrp.com.br Genetics and Molecular Research 14 (4): 18356-18369 (2015) their desirable traits into cultivars of hulless barley to improve yield and other agronomic traits.

Phenotypic diversity for quantitative and qualitative characters of barley (Hordeum vulgare) accession from Algeria

“…Morphological diversity, yield components, and yield depend on the genetic potential of the varieties used and the environmental conditions (Gabillard 1983). The use of morphological traits remains the most basic method to analyze initial germplasm resources (Zeng 2015). Morphological characterization is the foundation of genetic diversity research (Chandran and Pandya 2000), it has been used to evaluate distinctness, uniformity and stability and to establish the description of a genotype in crops including barley.…”

The popular Algerian barley landraces Saïda and Tichedrett are autochthonous – evidence from RAPD, SSR and agrophenological markers

“…To what extent a given arbitrary marker (such as RAPD or SSR) reflects phylogenetic relationships, depends also on the question, to what extent it is coupled to morpho-agronomic traits. To characterise genetic resources with respect to their morpho-agronomic traits is fundamental, therefore (Zeng, 2015). In our set of genotypes, we detected a positive and significant correlation between days to heading, height, days to maturity and number of spikes per area, while days to heading correlated negatively with the number of grains per spike.…”

Barley Phenology: Physiological and Molecular Mechanisms for Heading Date and Modelling of Genotype‐Environment‐ Management Interactions

“…Although negative correlation between yield and quality traits [132] and between life cycle and quality traits [133] were reported, maintenance of quality traits is critical in order to alleviate malnutrition [134]. The majority of crop models are constrained in predicting both the physical and cryptic (nutritional) grain quality such as grain size and grain-N content [134], although the model has been used to account for both above and below ground biomass, growth, water, N uptake and leaching [124].…”