Morphological Genetic Variation of Native Species of Aegilops triuncialis L. Collected from the northern half of Iran

Genetic diversity is the basis of breeding programs and allows plant breeding with desirable traits and characteristics. Aegilops spp. is one of the wild relatives of bread wheat and has a large distribution in the Middle East and West Asia, with Iran covering a large part of this region. In this research, 154 native populations of Aegilops triuncialis L. from the National Iranian Genetic Bank were evaluated in an Agement block design with three replications. Evaluation of morphological traits was carried out according to the instructions of the International Institute of Genetic Resources. According to the results, the highest genetic diversity was related to the Aegilops triuncialis populations of East Azarbaijan and Ghazvin provinces, and the least diversity was in the populations of Kurdistan and North Khorasan provinces. In terms of diversity coefficient of qualitative traits, the accessions of East Azarbaijan, West Azarbaijan and Zanjan provinces in most of the traits have the highest indices and the accessions of Semnan province were in most of the traits lacking diversity. Correlation analysis showed that spike and stem traits had the highest correlation coefficients. Based on the cluster analysis of the accessions with morphological traits, in some cases, the grouping pattern was matched with the geographic distribution of the accessions. Given that the use of wild wheat relatives in breeding programs requires genetic diversity, the results of this study emphasize the importance of Ae. triuncialis species as a source of valuable genes that have high genetic potential for wheat breeding.