BackgroundBarley (Hordeum vulgare L.) is a major cereal crop, which is cultivated under variable environmental conditions and abiotic stresses in marginal areas around the globe. In this study, we evaluated 150 Jordanian landraces obtained from ICARDA Gene Bank and four local checks for yield and yield components related-traits in two locations across Jordan for three growing seasons under rainfed conditions. The study aims to identify superior Jordanian barley genotypes under dry conditions, to understand the genotype × environment (G × E) interactions, to analyze stability parameters and to identify markers associated with yield and yield components under rainfed conditions.ResultsThe barley accessions exhibited significant variation for all traits studied. Three accessions with high yield, cultivar superiority and stability under specific environments were identified with accession G69 is the highest yielding and superior for Madaba and overall environments and G144 is the highest yielding at Ramtha. Accession G123 was high yielding in all environments and was stable across different environments. At the genetic level, the Jordanian landraces were found to be diverse with a clustering that was based on row-type. The GWAS analysis identified 77 significant markers-traits associations for multiple traits including grain yield (GY) with three significant QTLs located at 1H, 2H and 7H, which seem important for dry environments.ConclusionUtilizing Jordanian barley landraces can effectively improve and adapt the current barley cultivars for cultivation under environmental stresses in dry regions. Utilization of markers associated with important agronomical traits and their incorporation in breeding using marker assisted selection can improve barley tolerance to drought stress.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1186/s12870-017-1140-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Plant genetic mapping strategies routinely utilize marker genotype frequencies obtained from progeny of controlled crosses to declare presence of a quantitative trait locus (QTL) on previously constructed linkage maps. We have evaluated the potential of discriminant analysis (DA), a multivariate statistical procedure, to detect candidate markers associated with agronomic traits among inbred lines of rice (Oryza sativa L.). A total of 218 lines originating from the US and Asia were planted in field plots near Alvin, Texas, in 1996 and 1997. Agronomic data were collected for 12 economically important traits, and DNA profiles of each inbred line were produced using 60 SSR and 114 RFLP markers. Model-based methods revealed population structure among the lines. Marker alleles associated with all traits were identified by DA at high levels of correct percent classification within subpopulations and across all lines. Associated marker alleles pointed to the same and different regions on the rice genetic map when compared to previous QTL mapping experiments. Results from this study suggest that candidate markers associated with agronomic traits can be readily detected among inbred lines of rice using DA combined with other methods described in this report.

Expressed sequence tag-simple sequence repeats (EST-SSRs) are genederived SSR markers that are developed using special software to mine complementary DNA (cDNA) clone and EST databases. Three hundred and forty-nine SSR-containing ESTs were identified after mining 5031 faba bean EST sequences that correspond to approximately 2.14 Mb. A total of 117 non-redundant SSR-containing ESTs were identified, and 34 primer pairs were designed and used to amplify 20 Jordanian accessions: 13 Vicia faba and seven Vicia species. Thirtyone primers were successfully amplified. The average polymorphic information content (PIC) value of 0.54 indicated the presence of high polymorphic loci, which were able to discriminate within V. faba and among Vicia species using the unweighted pair-group method with arithmetic mean (UPGMA) dendrogram. The transferability rates of markers ranged from a high of 80.6% in Vicia sativa to a low of 48.4% in Vicia hybrida with an average interspecies transferability of 65.9%. The present study was the first detailed effort to develop and validate a large number of potential SSRs for functional coding sequences in V. faba and related species.

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