Genetic diversity of ICARDA’s worldwide barley landrace collection

Twenty genic- and genomic SSR markers were used to study genetic diversity and geographical differentiation of barley from 29 countries through analysis of a worldwide collection of 304 ICARDA’s barley landraces. Of these, 19 loci were highly polymorphic in the material studied. Based on Nei-distance matrix, Principal Component Analysis (PCoA) and cluster analysis using UPGMA associated with AMOVA the data revealed countries’ grouping within regions. Three distinct germplasm pools were identified in the landraces. The first of these was from Eastern Africa (Eritrea and Ethiopia) and South America (Ecuador, Peru and Chile) suggesting that barley introduced to South America might have originated specifically from East Africa or that they share a common genetic basis for adaptation. The second was the Caucasus (Armenia and Georgia) and the third included the remaining regions of Central Asia, Near East, Northern Africa and Eastern Asia. Genetic diversity of barley subspecies (Six-rowed barley, Two-rowed barley, H. spontaneum C. Koch and H. agriocrithon Åberg) also discriminates them into three groups: cultivated barleys (Six-rowed barley and Two-rowed barley), wild barley H. spontaneum and subspecies H. agriocrithon. These results associated with parsimony analysis demonstrate that H. agriocrithon and H. spontaneum might be distinct and do not support a hybrid origin for H. agriocrithon suggesting further investigation of the basis of more intense sampling of the two subspecies H. spontaneum and H. agriocrithon.