Genetic Diversity of Cultivated Barley Landraces in Iran Measured Using Microsatellites

Abstract

The cultivated barley (Hordeum vulgare subsp. vulgare) is one of the major crops in the world, cultivated in all temperate areas. Because there is not enough information about genetic diversity of barley landraces in Iran, in this study the genetic diversity of its landraces was evaluated using 26 microsatellite markers. The genetic diversity between 42 accessions (13 accessions of two-rowed and 29 accessions of six-rowed barley) collected from various regions of Iran was assessed. A total number of 161 alleles were found from 26 SSR loci. A high level Results: The 26 primer pairs assayed 26 loci with 161 alleles (Table 2). About 31 of these alleles were rare (frequency 0.95). The overall of polymorphism information content (PIC; average = 0.663), genetic diversity (0.705) and allele number per locus (6.19) were observed. In dendrograms constructed based on the SSR data, the cultivars distichon (two-rowed) and hexastichon (six-rowed) were separated. Based on the results of this study, it can be concluded that there is a high level of genetic diversity between the barely landraces in Iran and that the barely Iranian gene pool is valuable source to search for new useful alleles for crop improvement. average number of alleles per loci was 6.19. The gene diversity between loci varied between 0.064 and 0.913. Total average genetic diversity of material was 0.705. Three of the 26 loci showed more than 10 alleles per locus. The alleles for the 26 loci were distributed among the four region of origin (W, SW, N and NE) as follows: 101 alleles for W, 90 for SW, 44 for N and 59 for NE. Only one allele each was detected for the Bmac067 Fig 1. Distribution of barley in different regions of Iran Introduction: Cultivated barley (Hordeum vulgare subsp. vulgare) is one of the most important crop cereal in the tribe Triticeae (poacea) that cultivated over the temperate regions. Based on several reports it has been originated from Fertile crescent in Near East or from Tibetan in the west China. Iran is placed in the southeastern edge of Fertile Crescent from where a, based on several evidences, the loci in the W accessions, the HVMLOH1A locus in the SW accessions, the EBmac602, HVMLOH1A, Bmac067 and EBmac906 loci in the N accessions and the WMC1A, HVMLOH1A and Bmac067 in NE accessions. In genetic distance based dendrogram, the accessions of two and six rowed barley were clearly separated. HH94SW