Characteristics of the spring common wheat variety ‘Balkysh’

   One of the recent breeding work results of the FRC KazRC of RAS was the spring common wheat variety ‘Balkysh’, which was included in the State List of Breeding Achievements approved for use in the Middle Volga region in 2021.   The purpose of the current study was to characterize the variety under the conditions of the last years of testing in comparison with other varieties.   The study was carried out in the fields with gray forest soils of the Tatar RIA, located in the suburbs of Kazan, in 2019–2023. The variety ‘Balkysh’ is not inferior or superior in productivity and protein yield to the varieties most common in the Republic of Tatarstan; the mean productivity of the variety was 4.31 t/ha, protein yield was 0.54 t/ha. The variety is characterized with high productivity stability. The variety had 25 % of gluten in grain, 13.2 % of protein, 94 units of IDK. The peculiarity of the rheological dough properties of the variety ‘Balkysh’ was a low value of flour force with 109 u.a., 61 mm of dough elasticity, 121 u.ph. of dough dilution, which can be used to form grinding grain batches balanced in quality to reduce the load on dough mixing machines. The variety ‘Balkysh’ is characterized with high field complex resistance to major leaf and stem diseases, with not more than 5 % of damage caused with brown leaf and stem rust over the years of testing; powdery mildew resistance during epiphytoty years was not lower than 6 points (a lower one third of the plant was slightly affected). The variety ‘Balkysh’ is characterized as short-stemmed; the mean plant height was 65.7 cm, which is significantly lower than that of the varieties developed by the TatRIA.