ASSESSMENT OF ECOLOGICAL PLASTICITY IN WHEAT VARIETIES

Abstract

There was conducted an analysis of the most common methods for assessing ecological plasticity in wheat varieties and lines proposed by R.A. Udachin, S. Eberhart and B. Russell, G.Tai, S.P. Martynov. It has been found that the use of methods proposed by Eberhart and Russell as well as by Tai requires a great set of varieties and long cycle of assessing ecological plasticity. These methods can not establish a tendency towards forming plasticity in the step breeding. The Martynov’s assessment method allows evaluating a tendency towards plasticity formation in a variety developed but only as to such an index as “variety stability”. It has been established that the Udachin’s methods are most efficient in practice. This technique allows evaluating ecological plasticity in samples at different stages of the breeding process by testing them against two agricultural backgrounds, as a minimum, with the use of the random repetition method, and uses indices of intensity and stability. A new variant of analytical expression for stability index has been suggested. The use of the index suggested was shown to be efficient for assessing a variety; certain values of the index typical for West Siberian conditions are given. An approach allowing us to expand information facilities for assessing variety responses to improvement of the environment has been ground.