Study of collection accessions of the fiber flax gene pool according to the main agronomic characters in the conditions of the North-West of the Russian Federation

Abstract

Studies on the evaluation of 20 fiber flax accessions of Russian, Chinese, Japanese and Polish breeding from the collection of the Federal Research Center "All-Russian Institute of Plant Genetic Resources named after N. I. Vavilov" (VIR) were conducted in 2018-2020 in order to identify the sources of agronomic valuable characters that are adaptive to the conditions of the North-West of the Russian Federation. The HTC for the growing season in 2018 was 0.95, in 2019 – 1.53 and in 2020-1.1. Abiotic conditions had a greater influence on the formation of plant height (59.6 %), seed yield (60 %) and fiber content in plants (55.1 %), but the influence of the genotype on these indicators was also significant. The effect size of the genotype prevailed in the formation of fiber yield (67.2 %) and the duration of the growing season (52.8 %). The variability of characters was the greatest according to the seed yield (V = 6.7-33.9 %), disease resistance (V = 3.1-26.5 %); the lowest one was noted according to the duration of the growing season (V = 4.4-9.7 %). For the rest characters, it was at the level of up to 20 %. A valuable and plastic source material was identified for practical breeding aimed at creating new varieties with the following characters: early maturity – K-8680 (Russia), K-8782, K-8783 (Japan), which matured 3 days earlier than the Dobrynya standard and had a growing period of 67 days; productivity – K-8651, K-8760, K-8795, K-8797, K-8874, K-8877 (China), which significantly exceeded the fiber yield of the Dobrynya variety (241 g/m2) by 8-14 %. There were identified genotypes significantly exceeding the standard: according to the plant height (82 cm) ‒ K-8681 (Russia), K-8751, K-8794, K-8795, K-8754 (China) ‒ by 12-25 %; yield of flax straw (241 g/m2) – K-8681 (Russia), K-8751, K-8794, K-8795, K-8874, K-8880 (China) – by 25-40 %; seed yield (149 g/m2) ‒ K-8680 (Russia), K-8772 (Poland), K-8782 (Japan) – by 10-23 %; resistance to lodging (9 samples) and diseases (7 samples). Use of the identified gene sources in breeding practice should accelerate the creation of varieties that provide high and stable yields.