The new winter rye variety ‘Irtyshskaya 2’

Abstract

Winter rye, with all its advantages (adaptability, stress resistance, increased productivity), cannot compete with other grain crops, and the reason is grain quality to a greater extent. Solution of the issue is possible when cultivating rye varieties with a low content of water-soluble pentosans in grain. In Western Siberia, winter rye has traditionally been considered a leading grain crop, which efficiently uses environmental resources and is more productive in comparison with winter wheat and triticale. In order to increase the efficiency, the low-pentosan rye variety ‘Bereginya’ was involved in the breeding study of the Omsk Agricultural Research Center. As an initial form, this variety was used to develop a new variety ‘Irtyshskaya 2’. The purpose of the current work was to characterize this variety according to a number of valuable traits. The study was carried out on the experimental plots of the laboratory for winter crop breeding in 2020–2022. The estimation of the rye variety ‘Irtyshskaya 2’ has identified several advantages in comparison with the standard variety ‘Irina’. The new variety was more productive. Its excess over the standard variety was 0.36 t/ha (with an average productivity of 6.34 t/ha). The variety ‘Irtyshskaya 2’ is characterized by the best severity of quantitative traits (‘grain size’ and ‘head productivity’) and grain quality indicators (‘grain unit’, ‘falling number’). In order to select for increased productivity of a new variety there has been proposed grain content of a head as the main trait, which is characterized by a strong correlation with the trait ‘grain weight per head’ (r = 0.731–0.889). In 2022 the variety ‘Irtyshskaya 2’ was sent to the State Variety Testing and recommended for use in the West Siberian and East Siberian regions.