FERTILITY OF ALFALFA VARIETIES IN SELF-POLLINATION AND CROSS-POLLINATION

Abstract

The article presents the results of studying alfalfa in a collection nursery by fertility, self-fertility, number of seeds in one pod, percentage of fertility of seedbuds in the ovary, number of seedbuds in one flower and seed productivity. The goal of the research is to study self-pollination and cross-pollination, fertility of a collection of alfalfa cultivars of different ecological and geographical origin to apply the best varieties in breeding process. All the experiments carried out at the «LLP Kazakh Research Institute of Agriculture and Plant» study area. We involved 134 varieties of alfalfa, sowing (M. sativa L) and changing alfalfa (M. varia Mart) of domestic and foreign breeding from 18 countries of the world. Due to the increasing interest in the development of synthetic and partially self-pollinated varieties of alfalfa, there has been a lot of attention paid to this issue. In the south-east of Kazakhstan, alfalfa forms 22-49% of pods from the number of observed flowers in a freely accessible state for pollinators. Alfalfa seed productivity depends significantly on seed setting per flower. The specimens from Ukraine (k-450), Turkmenistan (k-253) and France (k-315) had fertility levels between 67,3 and 72,1 % in the conditions of south-east Kazakhstan. The index of pod setting during cross-pollination in all varieties persuasively exceeds in 3 - 5 times the level of pod setting during self-pollination under isolators. Self-fertility in specimens varied in the organic range of 8,4 - 14,2 %. One of the major criteria determining the level of seed productivity is seed yield per pod, this index stood out varieties: from Sweden (k-356), Ukraine (k-450), Turkmenistan (k-253) and France (k-315). The yield of seeds per pod reached 3.5 - 4.3 (0 of 7). All in all, the specimen from France (k-315) differed by high rates of seed yield. Seed yield reached 47.3 g/m2, which exceeded the standard by 36.3%. Besides, US (k-365), Ukraine (k-450), Turkmenistan (k-253), Russia (k-473) showed good results, where the excess under the standard was 15.2 % - 21.9 %.