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.