Genetic Progress in Winter Barley for Yield and Adaptability to Unfavorable Environmental Conditions
Eugen Petcu, Liliana Vasilescu
National Agricultural Research and Development Institute Fundulea
Keywords: winter barley, yield, stability, TKW, protein content, density.
Abstract: In the context of climate changes, increasingly unfavorable to the winter barley growing in southern and southeastern Romania, due to the rainfall quantities decreasing in the critical winter barley stages development, obtaining valuable varieties with high yield potential and seeds quality is the most important goal in the process of breeding. Created by the pedigree method, the Iulian winter barley variety, released in 2021, has been tested in different areas of winter barley growing, with different pedo-climatic characteristics in Romania.
In the period 2017-2020, under a classic technology was tested and the winter barley variety Iulian achieved an average yield of 5882 kg/ha in the SIVTR testing network with an increase in yield of 8.8% compared to the check variety Dana and in the research and development stations network (2014-2020), it achieved an average yield of 7081 kg/ha (7% more than the check variety Dana).
For a wide characterization, it was tested at two different densities, namely: a low density, 350 b.g/m2, and a classic density of 500 b.g/m2 at NARDI Fundulea (4 years in southeastern Romania) being analyzed for both yield potential and quality indices (TKW, protein and starch content).
In the four years of experimentation, the Iulian winter barley variety recorded an average production of 6782 kg/ha cultivated at a classical density, and at a low density, it recorded a yield of 7416 kg/ha (a difference of 634 kg/ha).
In terms of grain quality, it registered high values for both the one thousand kernel weight (51.5 g) and the starch content (61.79%). The protein content was lower at low density, which can make the yield of the Iulian variety a very good quality raw material in the malt and beer processing industry, where the protein content requested standard is between 9.5-11.5% (Romanian Brewers Association).