Evaluation of Drought Tolerance in Barley (Hordeum vulgare L.(Germplasm from Warm and Dry Climates of Iran

A total of 277 barley landraces belonging to barley collection of National Plant Gene Bank of Iran, originating from eleven provinces in arid-zone of Iran were evaluated for drought tolerance. The genetic materials were planted in two normal and stress experiments in augmented design scheme. The grain yield was measured and stress tolerance indices were computed. Results of descriptive statistics indicated that STI had higher coefficient of variation (56.56%) than the other stress indices. GMP and STI with large coefficient of correlation with grain yield under stress and normal conditions were identified as the best indices. Fifty-nine morphotypes were located at group A of Fernandez category, among them, 70227 from Yazd, 6507.2, 6436 and 6252.1 from Boshehr, 70013 and 70014 from Kerman, 6652.2 from Khozestan, 6421 from Khorasan and 70017 from Sistan and Balochestan had the largest STI and were identified as superior morphotypes in this research. Based on Euclidean distance between origins of the accession, morphotypes of Sistan and Balochestan had the lowest and morphotypes of Khozestan and Lorestan had the highest similarity. Provinces Lorestan, Fars, Hormozgan, Khozestan, and Markazi were located at the margin of scatter plot drawn based on multi-dimensional scaling, while Boshehr and Isfahan were located near to origin. Since the morphotypes in this research were all originating from arid climates, most of them exhibited high tolerance to drought stress, but a high genetic diversity was observed in local germplasm of barley for drought tolerance.