Genetic Study of Yield and some Agronomic Traits in Barley using Generation Mean Analysis

To study the inheritance of quantitive traits in barley, crosses of barley cultivars Reyhan × Makuei and Reyhan × Kavir were studied. In each cross, parents together with F1, F2, BC1 and BC2 generations were evaluated in a randomized complete block design with three replications in research farm of Islamic Azad University, Karaj Branch. Different agronomic traits and grain yield of treatments were recorded during the growth season. The results of analysis of variance showed significant differences among generations for all traits. The generation mean analysis showed that in addition to additive and dominance, effects of epistasi were also important in inheritance of the traits. In both crosses the dominance effects were more important than additive effects for plant height, grain diameter, stem diameter, head and awn length, grain yield and 1000 grain weight. In Reyham × Makuei, for spike weight and grain number per spike, dominance effects were more important than additive effects while in Kavir × Makuei additive effects were important. The additive genetic variance was more than dominance genetic variance for traits stem diatemer, grain per spike awn and spike length and spike weight in Reyhan × Makuei, and for traits plant height, grain height, grain diameter, stem diameter, awn and pedancle length and grain yield in Kavir × Makuei. Spike weight and grain weight had the highest broad and narrow sense heritability in Reyhan × Makuei and Kavir × Makuei, respectively. Three genetic factors were determined to control the grain yield.