Agronomic performance of barley ( <i>Hordeum vulgare</i> L.) accessions in Tigray, Northern Ethiopia

Abstract Barley ( Hordeum vulgare L.) is used in numerous traditional foods: injera, dabo, kolo, tihlo, besso, and in making local drinks. Nevertheless, there are not many comprehensive reports on the availability of best performing accessions of this primary grain crop. Therefore, this study was conducted to identify the best agronomic performance of barley accessions in terms of yield and yield‐related traits. The experiment was set up in two rows using an alpha lattice design with two replications. The analysis of variance of morphological traits revealed a highly significant variation across the accessions. Grain yield showed large variation that ranged from 0.12 to 9.20 t ha −1 with a mean of 3.66 t ha −1 , and the highest coefficient of variation was recorded in grain yield followed by number of kernels per spike and biomass. The majority of the quantitative traits' correlation analyses revealed a highly significant association ( p &lt; 0.01), and plant height ( r = 0.451, p &lt; 0.01), flag leaf length ( r = 0.259, p &lt; 0.01), and biomass ( r = 0.847, p &lt; 0.01) all had a beneficial impact on grain yield. The principal component analysis (PCA) showed that the first three PCAs contributed a cumulative effect of 70.1% of the overall variation among the accessions. The result of our study indicated that during selection of best accessions for the upcoming crop improvement, traits such as biomass, grain yield, number of kernels per spike, and plant height are crucial. The large variability observed in the current study is very important and would be used as an essential input for further improvement programs of barley crop.