Abstract
Barley has been continuously cultivated in the Canary archipelago for millennia, and to this day landrace barley is the preferred choice for cultivation. We have morphologically and genetically characterized 57 landraces collected during the twenty-first century and conserved in genebanks. The majority of accessions were of the six-row type. Although landraces from the same island tended to be similar, the results showed morphological and genetic diversity both within and in the case of genetic data among islands. Accessions from the easternmost islands were genetically distinct from those from the central and western islands. Accessions from the western islands often had a mixed genetical composition, suggesting more recent exchange of plant material with the central islands. The geographic distribution of diversity suggests that conservation of barley genetic resources needs to consider all islands in the archipelago. Landrace barley from the Canary archipelago was found to be morphologically distinct from continental landrace barley. We suggest the uniqueness of Canarian barley, in terms of morphology and genetic diversity, can be used for marketing purposes providing added market value to the crop.
Highlights
The Canary archipelago is located some 100 km west of Northern Africa and consists of seven major islands
We found significant correlations between morphological traits and neutral genetic markers when analysed with Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and the correlations were not very strong, possibly as a result of the limited number of markers used, we can conclude that at least some aspects of the morphological diversity were captured by the neutral genetic markers used in this study
We have described the distribution of morphological and genetic diversity in landrace barley, within and among Canary islands
Summary
The Canary archipelago is located some 100 km west of Northern Africa and consists of seven major islands. The islands remained isolated from the mainland, and to a certain extent from each other, until the Hispanic conquest in the fifteenth century (Morales et al 2009). Vulgare) was a major crop (Morales 2010). Barley continued to be a major crop after the Hispanic conquest, and was still the most important winter cereal during the seventeenth century (Sanchez-Manzano Suarez 1984). Part of the production continues to be used for making ‘‘gofio’’ (toasted flour) the primary use today is grain and straw for livestock (Afonso et al 2012). On the eastern islands barley has been cultivated alternatingly with wheat on marginal, poorer lands, under more unfavourable conditions (Gonzalez et al 2005)
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