Allozyme genotypic composition and genetic distance between the Ethiopian land race populations of barley

158 land race populations of barley were collected from 19 regions lying between 6.10° to 12.0° N and 37.33° to 42.29° E in Ethiopia. The mixed sample of each population was rejuvenated under greenhouse conditions in Sweden. The rejuvenated 3266 individuals of the entire population were assayed electro‐phoretically for 5 enzyme loci. Distance matrix and dendrograms generated from genotype and gene frequency data of the 19 regions are compared and contrasted. The diversity index worked out for regional genotypic composition, the distribution of genotypes over populations, and the distribution of populations over genotypes are presented. The genetic distance estimated using allelic or genotypic frequencies showed that D is not related to geographical distance. A total of 156 allozyme genotypes were observed, out of which 95 were unique for single populations. Two genotypes were found to have a very wide distribution over the populations. The lowest number of genotypes in a population was 1, and the highest 16. The unstandardized Shannon‐Weaver index of the regions worked out on genotypic composition ranges from 3.44 to 0.80, indicating the different levels of genotypic diversity of the different regions and also the importance of different regions for in situ gene conservation.