Evaluation of spring soft wheat lines from the secondary gene pool of the Arsenal collection for economic characters under the conditions of the Altai Region’s Ob River area forest-steppe

Abstract

This paper discusses the research findings on 25 new genotypes of spring soft wheat (Federal Research Center “Nemchinovka”) with resistance to fungal diseases developed by using stem rust resistance donors having genetic material of the species Aegilops speltoides, Ae. triuncialis, Triticum kiharae, Secale cereale and T. migushovae under the conditions of the Altai Region’s Ob River area forest-steppe. The research goal was to study and identify new sources of breeding-valuable traits for the subsequent introduction into breeding program aimed at creating highly productive varieties with good grain quality and resistance to leaf and stem diseases. The field experiments were carried out in 2021 and 2022 in the trial field of the Federal Altai Scientific Center of Agro-Biotechnologies. The lines were studied in terms of the following morphobiological characters: resistance to powdery mildew, Septoria blight, brown and stem rust, plant height, the number of spikelets per main spike, number of grains per main spike, thousand-kernel weight, and grain weight per main spike. The coefficients of productive tillering and photosynthetic efficiency were calculated. The grain yield per 1 square meter was counted, the grain protein and gluten content, gluten content in flour and its quality were determined. As a result of the study of spring wheat accessions, it was found that in the Altai Region’s Ob River area forest-steppe, the new initial material showed high resistance to leaf and stem diseases, but did not exceed local standards in the development of quantitative characters including yielding capacity. The genotypes were identified that combined productivity at the standard level with good grain quality - 49-16i and 135/10i, and high productivity with resistance to leaf and stem diseases - 25-16i, 48-16i and 135/10i.