## 3 Results and Discussion
### Variations of Agro-Morphological Traits
#### 3.1.2 Quantitative Agronomical Traits  
Variations were also observed in quantitative traits among the barley accessions (Table 2 and Table S3). The coefficient of variation (CV) was the highest for AL (40.31%), followed by GPP (38.72%), and the lowest for DM (3.07%). In the overall population, DH, DM, SL, and GPP exhibited a positive skewness, whereas the other traits displayed a negative skewness. The kurtosis ranged from the most negative value for GPP to the highest positive value for DM. These findings indicate that not all of the quantitative traits followed a normal distribution. DH and DM were in the ranges of 166-213 and 198-238 days, respectively. Likewise, DHM was in the range of 16-45 days. The observed values were comparable to those from several previous studies. For instance, [PERSON] et al. [22] reported DH of 99-165 days and DM of 140-185 days across 112 elite barley populations, while [PERSON] et al. [21] reported much lower DH (52.0-93.0 days) and DM (81.7-117.0 days) ranges across 116 barley accessions of different origins. In another study, DH and DM in the ranges of 65.0-125 and 106.5-114.7 days, respectively, were reported across 316 barley genotypes sown at different times [3]. These observations highlight the wide-ranging DH and DM values, which could be attributed to the differences in growth conditions, years of cultivation, and genotypes, among others [10; 28; 42; 43]. In our study, three accessions, including ST-96 from China, PI 559514 from Nepal, and OUI 426 from India, equally displayed the shortest DH, while accession 302 from Turkey took the longest DH (Table S3). ST-96 was also the earliest to mature, while PI 304357 from Portugal and Castelar-034 from Argentina, along with accession 302, were the latest to mature. Amongthe control cultivars, Betaone was the latest to mature, taking 215 days, while Heukdahyang was the earliest, taking 206 days (Table S3). Early-maturing barley varieties are beneficial for use in breeding as well as dissemination to farmers [44]. Overall, a total of 18 accessions were identified as early maturing compared to all the control cultivars (Table S4). Therefore, these early maturing accessions could be ideal resources in this regard. The other quantitative agronomical traits also showed variations among the barley accessions. CL and SL were in the ranges of 23.23-127.33 and 3.00-14.40 cm, respectively, while AL ranged from 0.00 to 21.30 mm, the latter showing the highest coefficient of variation (CV: 40.31%) among all quantitative traits. GPP and TGW are other yield-related traits, and each showed wide variations among the barley accessions. The former ranged from 10.40 to 67.40 and the latter from 3.00 to 68.00 g. Among all the barley accessions, B-205 from Portugal and Gyeongnamyang-1985-917 from Korea displayed the shortest CL and SL, respectively, while RNB-9 from Nepal and GRA2256 from Tajikistan had the largest CL and SL, respectively. Interestingly, seven accessions, including PI 510558, PI 270747, and PI 270611 from Peru, WIR1089 from Mongolia, 2155A from Switzerland, Shargudik-2 from India, and RNB-132 from Nepal, displayed no awns with an AL of 0.00 cm. In contrast, CI 6222 from Turkey and HVS 355 from Lebanon equality displayed the longest AL. Previously, several studies have evaluated the variations of quantitative agronomic traits and reported wide-ranging values. A comparable SL range (4.32-11.55 cm), but a much lower AL range (0.92-5.75 cm) were reported across 417 barley accessions grown in Germany [45]. In another study, CL ranged from 53.9 to 82.4 cm, and SL ranged from 49.6 to 90.7 mm [46]. [PERSON] et al. [3] also reported SL ranging from 4.5 to 13.1 cm, which was comparable to our results. Regarding GPP and TKW, [PERSON] et al. [20] reported a TKW ranging from 17.77 to 67.23 g across 224 barley accessions of worldwide origin, while [PERSON] et al. [21] reported a GPP ranging from 7.7 to 43.6, both being close to the ranges observed in our study.