Evaluationof genetic diversity of barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) cultivars and relationship among traits using agronomic characteristics and molecular markers

Twenty four barley varieties were evaluated for their genetic diversity using thirteen agronomic and morphological traits as well as ten SSR primers. Analysis of variance showed significant differences among cultivars for all traits, indicating a high genetic diversity. Grain yield had a positive and significant correlation with number of nodes per plant, plant height, 1000 grain weight, grainfilling durationand tiller number per plant. Principal component analysis categorized 13 primarily variables into 4 new variables (four principal components) representing 75.92% of total variations. All varieties were divided into three clusters based on their quantitative traits. In group 1, most varieties were from warm regions however, many varieties in group 2 had come from cold areas. Although some varieties with similar growth habitswere categorized in one cluster, they were not separated based on their growth habitby clustering. Molecular genetic diversity was performed using PIC (Polymorphic Index Content), number of effective alleles and Shannon Index. Totally 43.28 average bands were scored of which 31.42 bands were polymorphic. Average number of polymorphic bands varied from 1.96 to 4.00 per primer. The highest polymorphic bands were related to Bmac0040 primer with an average of 4.00 bands and the lowest in Bmag0013 primer with 1.96 bands. The highest bands were observed for Jonoob and Goharjo varieties with 4.8 and the lowest one for Reyhan 03 cultivar with 3.8 bands. The highest and the lowest polymorphic varieties were Goharjo with 81% and Fajr 30 with 54% bands, respectively. Based on Shannon Index, PIC and effective allele number, there was more genetic diversity among facultative varieties over spring varieties. There was no relationship between morphological and molecular clustering which impliesthat there is no linkage between used SSRs and studiedmorphological loci. Since SSRs are located in non-coding regions, lack of relationship between morphological and molecular clustering is not unexpected.