Variations in spike traits among pure lines selected from a barley landrace
Abstract
Landraces account for a large part of the variation in gene banks. The use of a landrace in breeding programs necessitate the characterization of pure lines selected from the landrace. The present study was conducted to determine the variations in a barley landrace originating from Turkey for spike characters. Twenty-five pure lines selected Turkish barley landrace Tokak (PI 470281) were evaluated in three field trials along with cv. Tokak 157/37. Spike traits such as heading time, spike length, number of grains per spike and number of spikes per square-meter were determined. As the average of trials, the number of spikes per square-meter of lines ranged from 223.4 (Line 217) to 291.3 (Line 59) and heading time from 72.5 day (Line 62) to 79.8 day (Line 217). As an average of locations, the number of grains per spike varied in a narrow range of 20.0 (Line 212) - 22.8 (Line 210) and spike lengths from 6.67 cm (Line 59) to 8.49 cm (Line 208). There were no considerable differences among the lines in terms of the spike length and the number of grains per spike. The lines evaluated had earlier heading than the Tokak variety, except for Line 217. Majority of lines produced more spikes per unit area than cv Tokak 157/37 in all locations. Therefore, the lines studies could be used as a gene source to increase grain yield under limited yield conditions. Further, evaluation of these lines in other characteristics related to drought tolerance may enable the identification of new variations for drought tolerance.
Keywords
Diversity, Fertile crescent, Heading time, Number of spikes per square meter