Agronomic and quality attributes of worldwide primitive barley subspecies

Old barley germplasm from the primary gene pool (landraces and wild relative) provides a broad representation of natural variation not only in agronomically important traits but also in nutraceuticals. Five hundred and twenty barley landraces including 36 wild barley relatives belonging to 33 countries were subject to agronomic and quality screening. The mean values for the four implemented environments (two sites by 2 years) revealed that the subspecies H. spontaneum was a great source of important traits (spike length, plant height, protein content and β-glucan content) comparing to H. vulgare (the top in grain yield and heading date) and H. distichon (first in TKW and particle size index). The blue aleurone colour was dominated for the most studied accessions. The ANOVA between subspecies associated with canonical variate analysis and hierarchical clustering confirms the finding to be used in barley breeding through incorporation of the candidate gene into the commercial varieties.