Status of soft wheat biodiversity in southwestern Algeria

Little is known about the diversity of wheat in Algeria. In the first part of the study (field survey), we began an inventory that was carried out in western Algeria (North and South) to collect local accessions of Triticum aestivum soft wheat for morphological characterization. In this context, a collection of 45 traditional and newly introduced soft wheat accessions was studied using nine quantitative agro-morphological traits. In the second part of the study (experimental squares), the collected seeds were sown in experimental squares in order to consider the environmental factor and see its impact on them. Phenotypic diversity was determined using the Shannon-Weaver diversity index (H') at different levels. The estimated H' showed a wide phenotypic variability for the different traits, with an average H' of 0.56 (according to the field survey), and an H' of 0.61 (according to the results of the experimental squares).