Genealogical Analysis of the Diversity of Spring Barley Cultivars Released in Former Czechoslovakia and Modern Czech Republic

Genealogical analysis was employed in studying the time course of changes in genetic diversity of spring barley cultivars released in former Czechoslovakia and the modern Czech Republic. Cultivars from different regions proved to significantly differ in the distribution of dominant ancestor contributions, suggesting a specificity of original ancestors to different cultivation conditions. A comparison of cultivar groups differing in end use showed that the genetic diversity of malting cultivars was significantly lower than that of feed cultivars, although modern malting and feed cultivars of Czechia and Slovakia have virtually the same genetic basis. Temporal analysis showed that diversity tended to increase through decades. While new original ancestors were introduced in pedigrees, especially in the past 30 years, the number of local landraces and old cultivars gradually decreased. The losses accounted for about two-thirds of the local germplasm. Thus, a substantial increase in genetic diversity was accompanied by genetic erosion of the local spring barley gene pool of former Czechoslovakia. A cluster structure was observed for the set of spring barley cultivars released in the postwar period. The coefficient of parentage averaged over all possible pairs of cultivars introduced in the Czech National List was estimated at 0.11. It was concluded that the genetic diversity of modern spring barley cultivars in the Czech Republic is at an acceptable level.