Evaluation of Genetic Diversity in Wild Barley (Hordeum vulgare ssp. spontaneum) Collected from West of Iran and Some of their Hybrids Resulted from Cross with Cultivated Barley

Crop wild relatives adaptively diversified for environmental stresses are valuable resources for crop breeding especially for climate change scenarios, supposedly worsening drought and heat conditions. In this study, genetic variation of 54 barley genotypes comprised of 47 H. vulgare spp. spontaneum genotypes collected from west of Iran along with Reyhan cultivar and six F1 hybrids resulted from cross of Reyhan cultivar with wild barley was evaluated using quantitative and qualitative morphological traits. The results indicated that grain yield had the highest variation as a quantitative trait and grain color had the highest polymorphism as a qualitative trait. Results of principal component analysis revealed that first component with 31.5% of variation (major contributors being days to flowering, days to pollination and days to maturity); as well as second component with 22.18% of variation (major contributors being grain yield, 1000-grain weight, and grain width) were the phenology and the yield components, respectively. The cluster analysis divided the genotypes into four groups. Reyhan cultivar was placed in the first group, F1 hybrids along with three top yielding wild genotypes were allocated to the second groups and genotypes from northwestern of Iran were allocated to the third group and other wild genotypes were allocated to the fourth group. The results showed no heterosis in the hybrids obtained from cultivated × wild barley cross.