Morphological diversity and association of traits in ethiopian food barley (Hordeum vulgare l.) landraces in relation to regions of origin and altitudes

Abstract

One hundred and two barley accessions and five checks were evaluated using augmented design consisting of four complete blocks in 2012 main cropping season at holetta agricultural research center. Ten quantitative and six qualitative characters were recorded. Analysis of variance showed significant difference (p3000. Phenotypic diversity was very high for kernel row number (H′=0.99), grain color (H′=0.90) and spike attitude (H′=0.85) and low for lemma color (H′=0.48). Days to flowering, days to maturity and numbers of seed per spike, from quantitative characters and kernel row number, grain color and spike attitude from qualitative characters were the most characters which contributed variances among accessions. Key words: Cluster analysis, diversity index, principal component analysis, qualitative characters, quantitative characters.