Fifteen barley landraces were collected from different localities in the
West-Bank,-Palestine during 2009. A field experiment was conducted at the
Faculty of Agriculture-An Najah National University to evaluate several
agronomical traits of these landraces in 2010-2011 growing season. Cluster
analysis was performed using the complete-linkage method, genotypic coefficient
of variation (GCV), phenotypic coefficient of variation (PCV), broad sense
heritability (H2), and genetic advance (GA) were calculated for the
quantitative traits. Significant diversity was exhibited among the landraces
regarding days to 90% heading, 100- grain weight, number of grains per spike,
spike length, and awns length. The Cluster analysis showed high genetic
diversity among the collected landraces with dissimilarity ranging from 0.26 to 0.75. The fifteen landraces were grouped into
four clusters. Genotypic coefficient of variation ranged from 6.1 to 22.9,
whereas phenotypic coefficient of variation ranged from 6.6 to 41.8 with
maximum phenotypic and genotypic variability observed for number of fertile
tellers, number of grains per spike and spike length. Moderate to high
heritability (broad sense) estimates (70-87%) were found for most of the characters.
The genetic advance was highest for number of grains per spike (39.4%),
followed by spike length (37.2%). High positive significant correlations were
found among the different studied traits with correlation coefficient ranging
from 0.395 to 0.536. The results of this
study indicated high genetic diversity among barley landraces in Palestine, which
make them potential sources for selection and hybridization programmes.