Genetic diversity of einkorn wheat (Triticum boeoticum Boiss.) accessions from the central Zagros Mountains

Abstract

Genetic resources are the valuable natural resources and national wealth in each country. The wild relatives of wheat, especially diploid species have useful traits for the wheat breeding. To study the genetic variation of wild einkorn wheat (Triticum boeoticum Boiss.) populations based on the morphological, agronomical and phonological traits, an experiment was conducted on 252 collected samples from central Zagros Mountains with six cultivars as controls in Research Farm of Razi University, Kermanshah, Iran during 2013–2014. The seeds of the samples and control cultivars were sown based on an augmented randomized complete block design in seven replicates. According to the analysis of variance, there was high variation among the samples. The population G collected from Kamyaran location showed higher amounts than average for the spike length, peduncle length, plant height and thousand kernel weight. The results of correlation showed that a thousand kernel weight had a highly significant positive correlation with the peduncle length, the plant height and the awn length. The cluster analysis classified the accessions and controls in five groups with distinct properties. The classification of the accessions using cluster analysis did not match with their geographical distribution. The accessions in the first group had the short kernel filling period; the accessions in the second group were late-maturing ones, the accessions in the third one had the highest peduncle length and plant height, the genotypes in the fourth group had early-maturing accessions with the lowest plant height and peduncle length and finally the accessions in the last group had the lowest number of kernels per spike and spike length.