The cultivated barley ranks fourth cereal crop in the world. The demand for higher-yielding, nutritious, and better-adapted crop varieties has increased the need to exploit genebanks diversity. Thus, assessing the genetic diversity of barley is essential to determine the genetic relationship between lines and deploy novel alleles in breeding programs. Here, we used 14 polymorphic Simple Sequence Repeat (SSR) markers to assess genetic diversity, genetic relationship, and population structure of 113 barley lines originated from 14 countries, and the majority from Africa. The average alleles per locus of 5.36, Polymorphism Information Content (PIC) of 0.57, and genetic diversity of 0.61 indicate a high degree of genetic variation in this collection. The Analysis of Molecular Variance AMOVA showed genetic variation within countries to be higher (74%) than among countries (26%). The STRUCTURE analysis was consistent with neighbor-joining clustering and principal components analysis, which identified three main subpopulations clustered primarily according to their geographic origin. Growing environments, migration between and within countries might have caused a considerable genetic diversity observed in the North African barley germplasm. The results of this study contribute to the conservation and utilization of these barley germplasm.

栽培大麦居世界第四位。对高产、营养和适应性更好的作物品种的需求增加了开发基因库多样性的需求。因此，评估大麦的遗传多样性对于确定品系之间的遗传关系和在育种计划中部署新的等位基因至关重要。在这里，我们使用 14 个多态性简单序列重复 (SSR) 标记来评估来自 14 个国家的 113 个大麦品系的遗传多样性、遗传关系和种群结构，其中大部分来自非洲。每个基因座的平均等位基因为 5.36，多态性信息含量 (PIC) 为 0.57，遗传多样性为 0.61，表明该集合中的遗传变异程度很高。分子变异分析 AMOVA 显示国家内部的遗传变异 (74%) 高于国家之间 (26%)。STRUCTURE 分析与邻接聚类和主成分分析一致，后者确定了三个主要根据地理起源聚类的主要亚群。生长环境、国家之间和国家内部的迁移可能导致在北非大麦种质中观察到相当大的遗传多样性。本研究结果有助于这些大麦种质资源的保护和利用。国家之间和国家内部的迁移可能导致在北非大麦种质中观察到的相当大的遗传多样性。本研究结果有助于这些大麦种质资源的保护和利用。国家之间和国家内部的迁移可能导致在北非大麦种质中观察到的相当大的遗传多样性。本研究结果有助于这些大麦种质资源的保护和利用。