COMPARISON OF MARKER SYSTEMS AND CONSTRUCTION OF A CORE COLLECTION INA PEDIGREE OF EUROPEAN SPRING BARLEY

Based on data in four publications describing European barley cultivar s, similarities between pairs of cultivars were calculated using indiv idual markers and combinations of markers. These markers included 19 i soenzyme patterns, Giemsa C-banding variants of each of the seven chro mosomes, hordein polypeptide patterns, DDT susceptibility type, and th ree morphological descriptors. The rank correlation between the coeffi cients of parentage and marker-based similarities is low; the highest single marker correlation is with Est-1, 0.41, and the highest correla tion with a combination of markers is 0.58. Giemsa C-banding patterns score rather high, as opposed to the three morphological characters th at score very low. Selection of core collections using the effective-n umber-of-origin-lines theory is successful. The average number of type s found in a core collection of cultivars of given size is always cons iderably larger than a random set of the same size. The core collectio n approaches the maximum possible number of types.