Adaptation patterns of winter wheat cultivars in agro-ecological regions

Abstract

Multi-environment trials are commonly used to assess cultivar adaptation patterns under different environmental conditions and to help make effective cultivar recommendations for growers. An example of a multi-environment trial system used for cultivar recommendations is the Polish Post-registration Variety Testing System. A common approach in cultivar recommendations is to evaluate the adaptability of cultivars across, or for, specific trial locations. However, the locations of the trials and the fields where a farmer will grow a crop are hardly ever in the same place. Therefore, it would be better to group the trial locations into regions and give recommendations for the whole region. The aim of this study is to evaluate the grain yield adaptation patterns of 62 modern winter wheat cultivars in six agro-ecological regions of Poland for two crop management intensities over five growing seasons. The analysis of the grain yield data was performed separately for each intensity using single-stage approaches in linear mixed models. We ascertained that winter wheat yield variability was in the main determined by agro-ecological region and their interactions, and to a small extent by the cultivar effect. Cultivars Sailor and Linus were widely adapted to all agro-ecological regions studied for both crop management intensities. It is highly probable that these two cultivars will obtain high yield in all agro-ecological regions as well as with both crop management intensities studied. We observed high compatibility rankings between locations for both crop management intensities. High compatibility of the cultivar rankings in the trial locations also provides high precision when determining regions.

Adaptive Grain Yield Patterns of Triticale (×Triticosecale Wittmack) Cultivars in Six Regions of Poland

“…Indirectly it means more significant effect on triticale yield of management than environment (growing season, region). The opposite results were obtained in the work by Studnicki et al [10] with winter wheat. The ranking of cultivars between regions was incompatible, while the ranking of cultivars between locations in one region was in good agreement and there was no differences in compatibility rankings between the two levels of management intensity tested.…”

“…Derejko et al [27] also reported stronger impact of crop management on triticale grain yield when environmental conditions were unfavorable. However, in [27] studies were conducted separately for each year of experiments, similarly to [24] and [10]. Unfortunately, the results based on one growing season only are not very useful.…”

“…Losert et al [13] stated that the trend of yield behavior can only be identified by observing yields for several growing seasons. When cultivars are evaluated over several years, the assessment is more reliable and cultivar means are characterized by a smaller error of estimation [10,28]. Finding locations in region that are similar in terms of crop yield has several advantages.…”

“…Based on our results, the cultivars which will successfully achieve a stable yield in each test location regardless of region or year are Pizzarro, Sorento and Algosto. In study [10] authors showed that well-adapted cultivars are characterized not only by high values of grain yield but also by good quality of other traits. However, in the studies by Kahram et al [11] it was possible to select two cultivars with a broad adaptation and the highest values of grain yield from 18 genotypes in six locations.…”

“…There are numerous studies on adaptability assessment, e.g., for sorghum [7,8], for winter wheat [9,10] for durum wheat [11], for rye [12], or for maize. However, there is still a lack of similar research on triticale cultivars adaptive response and recommendation, and an explanation of the cultivar × environment interaction for triticale.…”