Evaluation of Genetic Divergence among Barley Genotypes Based on Agro-Morphological Characters

The knowledge of nature and the magnitude of divergence existing in the breeding materials are useful to identify suitable parents or populations to combine favorable genes. Thus, 28 barley genotypes were evaluated at Gitilo site in RCB design with three replications during the 2018/19 season. The aim of the study was to investigate the magnitude of genetic divergence among the existing breeding materials. The result revealed that the barley genotypes were grouped into four clusters. The inter-cluster distance was greater between clusters I and II, followed by cluster II and III and then between clusters II and IV, I and IV, III and IV, between I and III so that crossing among parents from distant clusters result in wide array populations with desirable alleles. Besides this, cluster mean analysis showed clusters IV and III contained desirable characters for high yield potential including net blotch and scald resistance indicating their suitability for direct variety development. The variation studied through principal component analysis revealed four principal components (PC1:32.7%, PC2:22.4%, PC3:16.7% and PC4:11.6%) accounting for about 83.4% of the total variation. Furthermore, the biplot graph identified barley genotypes or populations 21, 20, 24 and 12 as desirable parents mainly for grain yield, biomass yield per plant and thousand kernel weights.