The results of breeding work on naked spring barley

In recent decades, the demand for naked barley grain on the market has increased, that is why the breeders of the leading institutions of the Russian Federation resumed breeding research to develop new naked barley varieties. In this regard, the purpose of the current study was to develop a breeding material for naked spring barley, adapted to the conditions of the Rostov region and, on its basis, new varieties. There have been developed the new naked barley variety with high productivity and grain quality, adapted to the conditions of the North Caucasus. The study was carried out in the scientific crop rotation of the department of barley breeding and seed production of the FSBSI Agricultural Research Center “Donskoy” (Zernograd) in 2014–2020. Based on the best local spring barley varieties (‘Leon’ and ‘Shchedry’) and naked varieties of the VIR collection (‘Mancuria’ (Sweden), ‘NB-OWA’ (Nepal), ‘CDC-Dawn’ (Canada), ‘K-3780’ (Tajikistan) and ‘Golozerny’ (RF)) there have been developed and studied the new naked barley lines. There was found that according to the trait ‘plant height’ the lines ‘Leon x Golozerny’ and ‘Leon x Mancuria’ belonged to the middle-height group (90.2 cm and 83.4 cm, respectively). The rest of the lines belonged to the tall group, their height varied from 96.5 cm to 100.3 cm. According to the trait ‘earing date’ there has been identified the line ‘Leon x Golozerny’ (24V), which is more early-ripening (5 days less than that of the standard). The same line turned out to be the only one that significantly exceeded the standard (the standard variety ‘Ratnik’ on 4.5 t/ha) according to productivity +0.3 t / ha, and taking into account the absence of hulls, this difference significantly increased to +0.7 t/ha. There was established that according to the trait ‘1000-grain weight’, the lines ‘Leon x Mancuria’, ‘Leon x CDC-Dawn’, ‘Leon x K-3780’ and ‘Leon x Golozerny’ significantly exceeded the standard variety. The best indicators of grain quality were identified for the lines ‘Leon x K-3780’ and ‘Leon x Golozerny’. The lines ‘Leon x Mancuria’ and ‘Leon x Golozerny’ were the most resistant to powdery mildew. The current paper has presented the characteristics of the new naked spring barley variety ‘Zernogradsky 1717’, which has a great productivity and a set of positive economically valuable traits.