Diversity in durum wheat landraces collected from Jordan .1. Quantitative traits

Two hundred and fifty landrace genotypes of durum wheat, were collected from nine districts in Jordan and analysed to ascertain the amount of variation for 13 traits. High variability was displayed by the 13 traits in the landrace genotypes. High significant correlation coefficient (r = 0.71, P < 0.001) were found between the 1000 kernel weight and the kernel weight in the main head and between fertile tillers and seed number and weight per plant (r = 0.93 & 0.89, respectively, P < 0.001). Four principle components explained 70% of the total variation in the 13 traits. The first component that counted for 25.23% of the total variability includes with high loading; spike number, total tiller, fertile tiller, and 1000 seed weight The second component that accounted for 18.16% of the total variability includes spike number, seed number/main, seed weight/main, and seed weight/plant. The third component that accounted for 16.69% of total variability has the following traits; plant height, peduncle length, upper node and spike number. The fourth component that accounted for 11.23% of the total variability has awn length, spikes length, spike number. Multivariate analysis by region revealed marked regional patterns and indicated that regions that have similar geographical and climatic similarity exhibit the same distribution pattern. These results suggested that Jordanian landraces are rich sources of genetic variation and therefore, it could be used in the reconstruction of a gene pool of germplasm for durum wheat improvement.