GENETIC DIVERSITY AMONG WILD AND CULTIVATED BARLEY AS REVEALED BY RFLP

Genetic variability of cultivated and wild barley, Hordeum vulgare ssp . vulgare and spontaneum, respectively, was assessed by RFLP analysis. The material consisted of 13 European varietes, single-plant offsprin g lines of eight land races from Ethiopia and Nepal, and five accessio ns of ssp. spontaneum from Israel, Iran and Turkey. Seventeen out of t wenty-one studied cDNA and gDNA probes distributed across all seven ba rley chromosomes revealed polymorphism when DNA was digested with one of four restriction enzymes. A tree based on genetic distances using f requencies of RFLP banding patterns was estimated and the barley lines clustered into five groups reflecting geographical origin. The geogra phical groups of land-race lines showed less intragroup variation than the geographical groups of spontaneum lines. The group of European va rieties, representing large variation in agronomic traits, showed an i ntermediate level. The proportion of gene diversity residing among,geo graphical groups (F-ST) varied from 0.19 to 0.94 (average 0.54) per RF LP pattern, indicating large diversification between geographical grou ps.