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Extent of Genetic and Phenotypic Variability in Food Barley (Hordium vulgare L.) Landraces from North Western Ethiopia

Melkamu Enyew * and Tiegist Dejene

In Ethiopia, there are over 15 thousand barley landraces stored in biodiversity institute of the country. Knowing the phenotypic and genetic characteristics of landraces stored in the gene bank helps breeders to select best landraces based on tangible results for variety development. The study was conducted on 48 barley landraces with four standard checks in augmented block design at Adet agricultural research center in 2016/2017 cropping season. The objective was to know the extent of phenotypic and genetic variability, heritability and possibilities of genetic advancement of barley landraces. The data collected were days to 50% flowering, days to maturity, plant height, total tiller number per plant, effective tiller number per plant, number of spikes per plant, spike length, number of grains per plant, biomass yield, thousand-grain weight, grain yield and harvest index. Analysis of variance revealed highly significant differences (P<0.01) among the landraces for the traits considered. Highest phenotypic coefficient of variance were 45.78, 42.8, 42.56 and 42.17 for biomass yield, grain yield, effective tiller number per plant and number of grains per plant respectively. Likewise the highest genotypic coefficient of variances were 47.87, 46.04, 45.9 and 44.65 for number of grains per plant, grain yield, biomass yield and effective tiller number per plant respectively. Highest heritability in the broad sense values were 99.44, 98.74, 95.27 and 93.49 for biomass yield, plant height, harvest index and total tiller number per plant respectively. The traits which had highest genetic advancement to be improved by selection were biomass yield, harvest index, total tiller number per plant and grain yield with the values 143.55, 81.26, 69.75 and 49.41 as percent of mean respectively. As a result, these traits could be improved by selection as there is ample variability in the landraces and the differences observed were due to genetic factors.