Abstract
BackgroundCultivated barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) is one of the world’s important cereal crops. Ethiopia is claimed to be the centre of origin due to its high phenotypic diversity and flavonoid patterns. It is widely cultivated on subsistence bases and important in supporting the livelihood of local poor. However, the local landraces are currently under threat of severing genetic erosion. Hence, assessing the extents of its genetic diversity is timely in improvement and conservation.Methodology120 representative cultivated barley landraces have been collected from Bale highlands, Ethiopia, and tested at two locations using alpha lattice design. Data were collected on 21 agro-morphometric traits and analysed using MINITAB 19, SAS 9.4 and FigTree v1.4.3.ResultsMost morphotypes in each of the qualitative traits considered and mean performance values in most of the quantitative traits revealed wide range of variations suggesting existence of phenotypic diversity among the landraces. Analysis of variance also showed significant variations among the landraces. All the traits, except days to maturity and plant height showed a significant variation for location and treatment-location interactions revealing the high impact of environmental conditions on the variations. Estimates of the variance components also revealed a wider range of variations in most of the traits considered with eventual medium to low genotypic (GCV), phenotypic (PCV) and genotype–environment coefficients of variation (GECV). Estimates of heritability in broad sense (H2) is low (< 40%) in all the traits except in days to maturity. Grouping of the landraces showed poor geographic areas of collection-based pattern suggesting extensive gene flow among the areas.ConclusionThe landraces evaluated in the present study showed high morphological diversity. However, the effect of environment factor is pronounced and thus, multiple locations and years with large number of samples must be considered to exploit the available genetic-based variations for breeding and conservation of the crop.
Highlights
Cultivated barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) is one of the world’s important cereal crops
Estimates of the variance components revealed a wider range of variations in most of the traits considered with eventual medium to low genotypic (GCV), phenotypic (PCV) and genotype–environment coefficients of variation (GECV)
Plant material In total, 120 representative barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) landrace samples were collected from 120 potential administrative kebles that constituted a total of 10 administrative woredas in Bale Zone, Ethiopia (Fig. 1, Table 1, Additional file 1)
Summary
Cultivated barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) is one of the world’s important cereal crops. Ethiopia is claimed to be the centre of origin due to its high phenotypic diversity and flavonoid patterns. It is widely cultivated on subsistence bases and important in supporting the livelihood of local poor. Koch) Thell, in the ‘Fertile Crescent’ area of the Near East at around 7000 BC [1] It is among the first domesticated cereal crops and has long history of cultivation that extends to more than 10,000 years ago. Others signify the country as the centre of origin because of the large phenotypic diversity [4] and high flavonoid patterns [5] in Ethiopian landraces. In Bale administrative zone, one of the potential agricultural areas in the country, it is the largest agricultural commodity and covers the largest production area next to wheat
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