Journal of Crop Breeding

In order to investigation of chromosomal variation in various populations of Aegilops cylindrica from northwest of Iran, the karyotype of each populations was prepared using aceto-iron-hematoxilin staining and different chromosomal characteristics were measured. The results showed that the karyotype of these populations consisted of seven pairs of metacentric, three pairs of submetacentric and four pairs of subtelocentric chromosomes which one pair of them (chromosome 3) had a secondary constriction and was satellited chromosome. The analysis of variance showed that the chromosome × population interaction was significant for the relative length and arm ratio index of chromosomes. Slicing of this interaction indicated that there were significant differences among populations in terms of relative length of chromosomes 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 11, 13, 14 and for arm ratio index of chromosomes 5, 10, 13, 14. According to Stebbins's karyotype asymmetry categories, all of populations placed in 2A class. Cluster analysis of populations using some karyological characteristics and symmetry indices based on complete linkage method separated the populations into three groups; without any following from their geographical distribution. Principle components analysis indicated that the first two components accounted for 50.5 and 33 percentage of total variance, respectively. In the first component, mean of chromosome length, mean of long and short arm length and in the second component, dispersion index, inter-chromosomal asymmetry index, relative length of the shortest chromosome and range of relative length of chromosomes, showed the highest proportion of variance among populations.