Long-Term Analysis of the Variability of Agronomic Characters in the VIR Oat Germplasm Collection in Central Black Soil Region of Russia

Abstract

Climate change has become a significant factor in crop production in the 21st century for many countries. To turn losses into profit, adaptation measures are needed, which are based on the analysis and forecast of economically valuable characteristics of crops. The field trial data were analyzed for 764 oat accessions from the global germplasm collection by the N.I. Vavilov All-Russian Institute of Plant Genetic Resources (VIR) in 2001–2019 and the cultivar ‘Gorizont’ in 1990–2019 in Yekaterinino Experiment Station of VIR (Tambov Province, Russia, 52°59′ N, 40°50′ E). A progressive shortening of the growing season and a yield increase were observed during the study both in the mean values for the tested accessions and in the cv. ‘Gorizont’. Grain yield variability of cv. ‘Gorizont’ across the years was also associated with 1000 grain weight variations. The models predict a further reduction in the growing season by 2.4 days/10 years, mainly caused by an increase in temperatures above 15 °C, and an increase in yield by 47.6 g/m2/10 years, mainly caused by an increase in the temperature in May. ANOVA demonstrated that the highest yields in Tambov Province were produced by accessions from Ulyanovsk Province, Ukraine, Moscow Province, Norway, Germany, and Poland.