Phenotypic responses of wild barley to experimentally imposed water stress.

Responses to water stress within a population of wild barley from Tabigha, Israel, were examined. The population's distribution spans two soil types: Terra Rossa (TR) and Basalt (B). Seeds were collected from plants along a 100 m transect; 24 genotypes were sampled from TR and 28 from B. Due to different soil water-holding capacities, plants growing on TR naturally experience more intense drought than plants growing on B. In a glasshouse experiment, water was withheld from plants for two periods (10 d and 14 d) after flag leaf emergence. A total of 15 agronomic, morphological, developmental, and fertility related traits were examined by analysis of variance (ANOVA). Ten of these traits were significantly affected by the treatment. A high degree of phenotypic variation was found in the population with significant genotypextreatment and soil typextreatment interactions. Principal component analysis (PCA) was performed using combined control and stress treatment data sets. The first three principal components (pc) explained 88.8% of the variation existing in the population with pc1 (47.9%) comprising yield-related and morphological traits, pc2 (22.9%) developmental characteristics and pc3 (18.0%) fertility-related traits. The relative performance of individual genotypes was determined and water stress tolerant genotypes identified. TR genotypes were significantly less affected by the imposed water stress than B genotypes. Moreover, TR genotypes showed accelerated development under water deficit conditions. Data indicate that specific genotypes demonstrating differential responses may be useful for comparative physiological studies, and that TR genotypes exhibiting yield stability may have value for breeding barley better adapted to drought.

Molecular mapping of two dwarfing genes differing in their GA response on chromosome 2H of barley.

The two recessive dwarfing mutants gai (GA-ins) and gal (GA-less), differing in their response to exogenously applied gibberellic acid (GA(3)), were mapped in the centromere region and on the long arm, respectively, of the barley chromosome 2H. The gene gai, which determines reduced plant height and GA insensitivity pleiotropically, was found to co-segregate with the two RFLP markers Xmwg2058 and Xmwg2287. Both markers are known to map close to the centromere. The GA-sensitive dwarfing gene gal was found to be linked to the three co-segregating RFLP markers Xmwg581, Xmwg882 and Xmwg2212 (proximal) and XksuG5 (distal) by 3.6 and 9.5. cM, respectively. The distance between the two mutant loci was estimated to be about 55 cM. Homoeologous relationships between the dwarfing genes within the Triticeae are discussed.