BARLEY CULTIVAR IDENTIFICATION BY USE OF ISOZYME ELECTROPHORETIC PATTERNS

Electrophoresis was employed to study esterase, acid phosphatase and peroxidase isozymes in shoot extracts from four local and eight introduced barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) cultivars. The numbers of bands obtained for esterase, phosphatase, anodal peroxidase and cathodal peroxidase systems were 21, 11, 10 and 7, respectively. Results indicated that esterase alone could be used to differentiate between most of the cultivars and whenever it failed to show differences in banding patterns between two or more cultivars, either phosphatase or anodal peroxidase systems could be applied for complete identification. No significant relationships were found between the banding patterns and agronomic characteristics of the cultivars. The results are compared with other published reports.