Environmental, phenotypic and genetic variation of wild barley (Hordeum spontaneum) from Israel

Wild relatives of crop plants offer an attractive gene pool for cultivar improvement. We evaluated genetic and phenotypic variation for a set of 72 Israeli accessions of wild barley from 21 populations. These populations were grouped further into four ecotypes. In addition, environmental variables describing the local conditions for the populations were used to infer the environmental divergence. Genetic, phenotypic and environmental distances were estimated from the data and UPGMA dendrograms constructed. The results showed that genetic variation was larger between populations than within them, whereas for phenotypic measurements variation was larger within populations than between them. No significant correlation was found between genetic and phenotypic similarities, or between phenotypic and environmental similarities, whereas a weak correlation between genetic and environmental similarities was detected. Twenty-three AFLP-markers were identified to be ecotype specific. Chromosomal location was known for five of these markers. Four of the five ecotype specific markers were correlated with both phenotypic traits and environmental variables.