Cultivar studies of broomcorn millet in terns of agri-environmental stability and plasticity

Abstract

Ecological plasticity reflects the ability of a cultivar to effectively use favorable environmental factors for consistently high performance.

In order to reduce the negative impact of weather conditions, peculiarities of adaptive variability of grain yield formation of modern millet cultivars by environmental parameters were established.

Methods. The experiments were carried out according to a multifactor model by the split plot method in stationary grain-fallow-row crop rotation in the Laboratory of Plant Production and Cultivar Studies of the Plant Production Institute nd. a V. Ya. Yuryev NAAS. Predecessors were soybean and sugar beet in 2008-2012. The millet cultivars Kharkovskoye 57 (the standard during the trial establishment), Konstantinovskoe and Vitrylo were investigated. The sowing method was row planting with the inter-row spacing of15 cm. The seeding rate was 3. 000.000  pcs./ha.

Results. The maximum performance in all the cultivars was obtained in 2011. On average, it varied between 3.14 t/ha - 3.27 t/ha. Among the cultivars the maximum average yield  across the years (3.00 t/ha) as well as the positive genotypic effect (0.27 t/ha) were obtained in the cultivar Vitrylo. The evaluation of agronomic stability of millet growing showed that all the cultivars were economically valuable with As = 91.3 % (the average across the cultivars).

In terms of the sum of ranks for all parameters of the genotypic effect the cultivar Kharkovskoye 57 (7) was the first followed by Konstantinovskoye (9), and Vitrylo (11) rounded out the group (11). The cultivar Konstantinovskoe (6) was the best in terms of plasticity followed by Vitrylo (8) and Kharkovskoye 57 (11).

Conclusions. Analysis of the yield capacity of the millet cultivars revealed that the millet cultivar Vitrylo was valuable in terms of the average yield across the years (3.00 t/ha), homeostacity (3.45 t/ha) and agronomic stability (As = 91.3 %). But the rank analysis of valuableness of the cultivars demonstrated that Vitrylo was inferior to Konstantinovskoye in terms of the grain quality - protein and starch contents. The standard cultivar Kharkovskoye 57 was valuable in terms of carotenoid content and genetic potential.