Morphological and genetic diversity of barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) germplasm

Seed priming is economically feasible technique, which can improve the issues of nutrient deficiency. Different concentration of copper sulphate (0.25 mM and 0.50 mM) was used as a priming media for barley seeds along with distilled water for comparison. The results showed that the measured attributes were variably affected by different levels of CuSO_4, specifically, when applied at the rate 0.50 mM, where, germination percentage was reduced while germination index and mean germination time enhanced. The studied barley accessions depicted 68 hordein subunits representing highly polymorphic polypeptides. It consisted of 17 rare types with molecular weight ranging from 32 to 129 KDa. These observed hordeins were categorized into three major groups such as hordein B, C and D, whereas, the late two were further subdivided into α and β groups. Alleles for the observed hordein subunits were found located at three different loci including Hor-1, Hor-2 and Hor-3 each having 25, 24 and 19 alleles, respectively). Regarding simple sequence repeat (SSR) diversity, the highest polymorphic information content of 0.375 was observed for Bmag0125 and Bmag0013, followed by Bmag0613 (0.3710) and Bmag0369 (0.365) whereas, the lowest PIC value (0. 252) was observed for Bmag0720. Number of alleles for the studied SSR molecular markers varied from 4 (Bmag 0490, Bmag 0613) to 7 (Bmag 0770). The SSR markers viz. Bmag0770, Bmag0720 and Bmag0500 exhibited the highest genetic diversity (GD > 0.75) in the studied barley accessions. This study demonstrates that the provide genetic information may be used in the marker-assisted selection for breeding programs and improvement of germplasm.