Characterization of Mexican wheat landraces using agronomically useful attributes

In 1992, 465 individual spikes of bread wheat were collected from 24 sites in three states of Mexico. They were examined for 15 morphological, agronomic and grain quality attributes as part of the routine regeneration process conducted by the CIMMYT Wheat Genetic Resources Program in unreplicated hill plots in a screen house. A pattern analysis (combined use of classification and ordination methods) of the data provided a good description of the accessions and the collection sites. Since economically useful attributes were used the analysis provided relevant information for both potential users and the germplasm curators. Potential users have a description of the accessions from which to choose relevant breeding material and curators can assess how well the accessions represent the diversity in the collection sites. The analysis would not have been possible if the individual spikes from collection sites were bulked as is the common practice.