ANALYSIS OF THE DISCRIMINATING POWER OF AGRO MORPHOLOGICAL AND BIOCHEMICAL DESCRIPTORS IN A SAMPLE OF THE SPANISH COLLECTION OF BARLEY (HORDEUM-VULGARE L)/

A sample representative of the national collection of barley (Hordeum vulgare L) has been evaluated with different agro/morphological and bi ochemical descriptors in order to determine their usefulness for discr iminating accessions. Multivariate analysis performed on three sets of traits (agro/morphological traits, biochemical traits and agro/morpho logical plus biochemical traits) showed that, in general, the relation ships between agro/morphological and biochemical descriptors were low. Cluster analysis revealed that the classification of the accessions b y the agro/morphological data was different from the classification ob tained according to the biochemical data, indicating that the two type s of markers reflect different patterns of diversity. However, neither agro/morphological nor biochemical characters identified all the acce ssions as unique phenotypes. Conversely, all the accessions were indiv idually separated using a combination of agro/morphological and bioche mical traits since the two types of markers provided complementary inf ormation.