Genetic Variability and Character Association in Some Ethiopian Food Barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) Genotypes

Abstract

Ethiopia is considered as one of the richest genetic resources centers in the world. The present study was conducted on thirty six food barley genotypes to estimate the genetic variability, broad sense heritability and genetic advance. The genotypes were grown in a simple lattice design at Holetta and Debark, Ethiopia. Data were collected on 11 morpho-agronomic quantitative characters. The analysis of variance at each location revealed highly significant (p 0.01) to low significant (p 0.05) difference for all the characters, except productive tillers in both testing locations. This indicated the existence of variability and hence the potential for selection and improvement for those characters. The mean performance of the genotypes indicated that IBON9045/05 at Holetta and BIFTU at Debark gave higher grain yield than the other genotypes. Grain yield, biomass, thousand kernel weight and kernel number per spike at Holetta were found to have high genetic advance as percent of mean with moderate heritability and genotypic coefficient of variability. At Debark, biomass, grain yield, harvest index and kernel number per spike have moderately high genotypic coefficient of variability with moderate heritability and high genetic advance as percent of mean. This means that effective and satisfactory selection for improvement of these important traits is possible. The present study generally implied the presence of significant genetic variability among the tested genotypes suggesting there is an opportunity to bring about improvement through direct selection and hybridization