THE EFFICIENCY OF SAINFOIN BREEDING FOR FODDER AND SEED PRODUCTIVITY

Abstract

The breeding work on the development of new sainfoin varieties is being constantly carried out, that makes it possible to identify genotypes with high fodder and seed productivity. The article presents the results of the Competitive Variety Testing of sainfoin varieties introduced in the State List of Breeding Achievements, approved for use in different regions of the Russian Federation and the variety ‘Shuravi’ given to the State Variety Testing in 2015. On average through three cycles the productivity of green mass of the sainfoin varieties ‘Atamansky’, ‘Veles’ and ‘Sudar’ were on 6.0–9.0% higher than that of the standard variety ‘Zernogradsky2’. The coefficients of the variation of green mass productivity of the varieties ‘Atamansky’ and ‘Sudar’ were 24.0% and 24.3% and green mass productivity of the variety ‘Veles’ was only 15.2%. Hay productivity of the varieties ‘Atamansky’, ‘Veles’ and ‘Sudar’ exceeded the indexes of the standard variety on 5.7%, 7.1% and 11.4% respectively. The coefficients of variation were 21.45 of the standard variety, 35.5% of the variety ‘Atamansky’, 23.5% of the variety ‘Veles’ and 24.0% of the variety ‘Sudar’. The seed productivity of the drought-resistant variety ‘Zernogradsky2’, approved for use under the most severe conditions of humidity of theNorth Caucasus, Nizhne-Volzhsky and Uralsky regions, ranged from 0.56 t/ha to 0.72 t/ha. The coefficient of the trait variation was 23.2%. The varieties ‘Atamansky’, ‘Veles’ and ‘Sudar’ exceeded the standard variety in seed productivity. The excess was 14.3–19.0%. The green mass productivity of the variety ‘Shuravi’ was 33.6 t/ha on average, the hay productivity was 7.9 t/ha, the seed productivity was 0.8 t/ha which were on 17.9, 12.8% and 28.6% higher than that of the standard variety. As a result of the breeding work during the many years the highly-productive sainfoin varieties ‘Atamansky’, ‘Veles’ and ‘Sudar’ were developed, introduced into the State List of Breeding Achievements and approved for use. The identified new promising sainfoin variety ‘Shuravi’ exceeds the standard variety in fodder and seed productivity. The use of new productive sainfoin varieties allow improving economic efficiency of sainfoin and other crops cultivation.