Diversity assessment of hulled barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) accessions of ICARDA in Indian condition using cluster analysis.

A total of 310 Barley accessions collected from ICARDA, Lebanon and grown in Indian condition at ICARDA-IRP (India Research Platform), Amlaha, (M.P.) were analyzed for morphological and genetic variability using nine agro-morphological traits i.e. Plant height (cm), number of tillers per plant, days to heading, number of ear heads per pant, length of ear (cm), number of spikelets per earhead, number of grains per earhead, yield per plant (g), and 1000-grain weight (g). The highest coefficient of variation as a result of highest diversity among the genotypes were found for grains per earhead (37.5%), spikelets per earhead (37.5%), yield per plant (35.3%), tillers per plant (31.3%) and earhead per plant (31.2%). However, ear length (16.9%), days to heading (15.4%), 1000-grain weight (13.5%) and plant height (11.2%) have conributued less to diversity with lower cofficient of variation. In cluster analysis, all the characters were used to construct a distance matrix using the Euclidian coefficient, and used to generate dendrogram showing similarity among all the genotypes, distance coefficient ranged between 0 and 200 which reveal the genetic diversity among genotypes. These exotic accessions evaluated can be further used for primary or secondary introduction in Indian breeding program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]