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This study characterized the diversity of 367 barley collections from 27 different countries, including 5 control cultivars, using several phenotypic traits. Morphological traits, including spike type, grain morphology, cold damage, and lodging rate, exhibited wide variations. Eighteen accessions matured early, while four accessions had longer culm and spike lengths than the controls. The ranges of total phenolic content (TPC), β-glucan content, ABTS•+ scavenging activity, DPPH• scavenging activity, and reducing power (RP) were 1.79–6.79 mg GAE/g, 0.14–8.41 g/100 g, 3.07–13.54 mg AAE/100 g, 1.56–6.24 mg AAE/g, and 1.31–7.86 mg AAE/g, respectively. Betaone, one of the controls, had the highest β-glucan content. Two accessions had β-glucan levels close to Betaone. Furthermore, 20 accessions exhibited increased TPC compared to the controls, while 5 accessions displayed elevated ABTS•+ scavenging activity. Among these, one accession also exhibited higher DPPH• scavenging activity and RP simultaneously. Based on the statistical analysis of variance, all the quantitative traits were significantly affected by the difference in origin (p < 0.05). On the other hand, grain morphology significantly affected biochemical traits. Multivariate analysis classified barley accessions into eight groups, demonstrating variations in quantitative traits. There were noteworthy correlations between biochemical and agronomical traits. Overall, this study characterized several barley varieties of different origins, anticipating future genomic research. The barley accessions with superior performances could be valuable alternatives in breeding.

Cultivated oat (Avena sativa L.) is an important cereal crop that has captured interest worldwide due to its nutritional properties and associated health benefits. Despite this interest, oat has lagged behind other cereal crops in genome studies and the development of DNA markers due to its large and complex genome. RNA-Seq technology has been widely used for transcriptome analysis, functional gene study, and DNA marker development. In this study, we performed the transcriptome sequencing of 10 oat varieties at the seedling stage using the Illumina platform for the development of DNA markers. In total, 31,187,392~41,304,176 trimmed reads (an average of 34,322,925) were generated from 10 oat varieties. All of the trimmed reads of these varieties were assembled and generated, yielding a total of 128,244 assembled unigenes with an average length of 1071.7 bp and N50 of 1752 bp. According to gene ontology (GO) analysis, 30.7% of unigenes were assigned to the “catalytic activity” of the parent term in the molecular function category. Of the 1273 dCAPS markers developed using 491 genotype-specific SNPs, 30 markers exhibiting polymorphism in 28 oat varieties were finally selected. The transcriptome data of oat varieties could be used for functional studies about the seedling stage of oat and information about sequence variations in DNA marker development. These 30 dCAPS markers will be utilized for oat genetic analysis, cultivar identification, and breeders’ rights protection.