Evaluation and Characterization of Barley Inbred Lines in Temperate Regions of Country

Extended Abstract Introductionand Objective: Barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) with a cultivated area of ​​nearly one and a half million hectares and with a production of about three million tons per year after wheat is the main crop in the country. The main objectives of this study were to (i) examine the variation within the barley national germplasm, (ii) compare the introduced germplasm with the check cultivars, and (iii) characterization of barley inbred lines based on multiple traits under irrigation conditions. Material and Methods:  A national temperate barley germplasm consisting of 108 inbred lines in the non-repeating Augment design with four controls in three blocks were evaluated in the farm of Neishabour Agricultural and Natural Resources Research Station in cropping year of 2018-19. Several main traits i. e., days to heading, days to maturity, plant height, thousand kernel weight and grain yield were recorded for preliminarily evaluation of the germplasm. Several simple univariate methods and genotype by trait (GT) biplot analysis were used to examine the variation within germplasm and to provide information to enable better germplasm utilization in the national temperate barley breeding program. Results: Wide variation was observed for the genotypes based on the studied traits. The comparison of genotypes based on multiple traits confirmed the possibility of finding contrasting groups. Based on GT-Biplot polygon, Nosrat cultivar along with 1, 34 and 5 lines were displayed high grain yield, grain filling period and day to maturity. The highest grain yield was 9.208 tons per hectare and belonged to line number 1.The vector view of GT biplot showed high correlation between grain yield with grain filling period and date to maturity. According to resulting from biplot of barley lines in comparison with ideal genotype, line no. 1 was identified as the ideal genotype. Also the closest genotypes to it were Nosrat cultivar and 34, 5, 4, 74, 41 lines. The high heritability for the traits (except for thousand kernel weight and plant height) is encouraging from a standpoint of increasing the selection efficiency. In conclusion, the GT biplot offers a useful analytic tool for examining the variation among large sets of lines, for exploring multiple trait data and for aiding in multi-trait selection. Conclusion: It was found that the genotypes with the highest grain yield had high the duration of the grain filling period, late in maturity and early in flowering under irrigated conditions. Based on the results, Nosrat cultivar along with lines 1, 34, 5, 4, 74 and 41 were the most high-yielding genotypes.