Investigation of the relationship between germination components and agronomical traits in barley using the canonical correlation analysis

As one of the most important stages of plant development, germination significantly impacts plant establishment and grain yield. The exploration of relationships between germination stages and plant agronomic traits can be of utmost importance in identifying the principal germination components to predict superior genotypes concerning yield-related traits in the field. This study examined this relationship through canonical correlation analysis (CCA). To this end, two field experiments were conducted using 100 barley lines and five check cultivars. A germination experiment was also conducted to investigate germination components. The CCA results based on both germination field experimental analyses revealed highly significant associations between agronomical traits and germination components. The first pair of canonical variables had significant correlation coefficients of 0.74 and 0.69 in both experiments (P < 01). The interpretation of the relationships between canonical variables and their own canonical variables, as well as the associations between the first variables and their opposite canonical variables, indicated that the germination key variables were: dry weight of radicles and plumule. These variables were highly correlated with the most important agronomical and morphological traits, such as grain yield, thousand-grain weight, and the number of spikes per square meter in the field (P < .01). Consequently, they can be used to predict superior and ideal barley genotypes regarding agronomic traits and yield in the field. This study's findings demonstrate that the CCA effectively identifies the relationship between the two groups of traits.