Cultivated barleys of Altai in the VIR herbarium collection (WIR)

The herbarium collections of Russia have been inventoried for determining the preserved diversity of cultivated barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) collected in the Russian part of Altai. It was found that the collected specimens of H. vulgare s.l. from this region, the total of 40 accessions, are represented only in the Herbarium of Cultivated Plants of the World, their Wild Relatives and Weeds (WIR) at the N.I. Vavilov All-Russian Institute of Plant Genetic Resources (VIR), excluding one herbarium sheet preserved in the Altai State University (ALTB). Among the Altai herbarium accessions of cultivated barley in the WIR collection, the dominating one is H. vulgare subsp. vulgare var. pallidum Ser. (36 accessions). Other botanical varieties are represented by few accessions: H. vulgare subsp. distichon var. nutans Schuebl. by two, and H. vulgare subsp. vulgare var. coeleste and H. vulgare subsp. distichon var. erectum Rode ex Schuebl. by one each. Herbarium sheets contain plants grown from seed accessions of Altai ancient varieties (landraces) preserved at VIR, which were collected in Altai in the first half of the 19th century. The studied herbarium samples will be used in studies of the diversity of H. vulgare and the history of its formation in the Russian part of Altai using modern molecular genetic methods.