Allele diversity of hordein-coding loci Hrd A and Hrd B in cultivated ( Hordeum vulgare L.) and wild ( Hordeum spontaneum C. Koch) barley in Turkey (as part of the Fertile Crescent)

Abstract

Starch gel electrophoresis is performed to study polymorphism of hordeins encoded by the Hrd A and Hrd B loci in 93 local accessions of cultivated barley and 37 accessions of wild barley from Turkey. Fortyfive and 32 alleles for the Hrd A locus are identified in H. vulgare and H. spontaneum, respectively, and 51 and 49 alleles are identified for the Hrd B locus. For H. vulgare, the allele frequencies range from 0.0011 to 0.2934 for the Hrd A locus and from 0.0011 to 0.0807 for the Hrd B locus. For H. spontaneum, the allele frequencies for these loci vary from 0.0089 to 0.2434 and from 0.0068 to 0.0766, respectively. Three alleles of the Hrd A and two of the Hrd В locus are common for Turkish H. vulgare and H. spontaneum. It was demonstrated that the earliest remains of barley grains were found in archaeological sites in the Middle East in Ohalo II near the Sea of Galilee dated back to the 17th millennium BC. The age of cultivated and wild barley remains from Egyptian archeological sites was determined to be 18000 years. We conclude that the southeast region of Turkey cannot be considered as the domestication center of barley. Herein, H. spontaneum from Southeastern Turkey could have been the donor of some hordein-coding alleles for H. vulgare. This could have been due to spontaneous hybridization events between H. vulgare and H. spontaneum during expansion of cultivated barley.

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