Genetic divergence among barley accessions from Ethiopia

The study was done with the objective of assessing the genetic diversity existing among Ethiopian and ICARDAbarley germplasm using multivariate data analyses. The experiment was conducted at Asasa and Ambo in Ethiopia, in 10 x 10simple lattices with two replications. To quantify the differentiation among genotypes canonical discriminant analysis, clusteringanalysis and Mahanalobis (D2) distance were used. The study indicated that the first two canonical variates explained 95%and 91% of the total variation at Asasa and Ambo, respectively. At both the locations, genotypes showed maximum differentiationon days to maturity, grain filling period, tiller per plant and spike per plant. Analysis of clustering grouped the 100 genotypesinto four cluster groups at Asasa and six clusters at Ambo. Ethiopian landraces and genotypes from ICARDA grouped in thesame cluster groups indicated the germplasm exchange between the Ethiopian and ICARDA barley breeding programs.