In the Middle Urals the middle-ripening varieties of spring soft wheat with gluten content of 22–24% and the middle-early and early ripening varieties of spring soft wheat with gluten content of 26–34% are able to form kernels suitable for bread baking of the first, second and third classes. Nowadays a comparative characteristic of the grain quality of the main varieties developed by the of the selection of the Ural RIA included in the State List of the Breeding Achievements in the Volga-Vyatka Region and their abili­ty to form food grain suitable for bread baking is of great practical interest. In the Krasnoufimsky breeding center there were stud­ied 11 spring wheat varieties included in the State List of the Breeding Achievements in the Volga-Vyatka region in the 2013 and 2016 years of arid conditions (90–100 mm of precipitation, 17.0–17.5 ºC of average daily air temperature) and in the years 2014 and 2015 of excessive moisture (294–423 mm of precipitation and 15–16 ºC of average daily air temperature). The early rip­ening varieties “Irgina” and “Iren” (71–94 days of vegetation period) formed an average yield of 2.94 t/ha. The middle-early ripen­ing varieties “Ekaterina”, “Gornouralskaya”, “Svecha”, “Bazhenka”, “Zlata” (75–98 days of vegetation period) produced 3.32 t/ha.The middle-ripening varieties “Krasnoufimskaya 100”, “Ekada 70”, “Simbirtsit”, “Omskaya 36” (90–94 days of vegetation period) pro­duced 3.55 t/ha. The most productive ones are “Iren” (3.05 t/ha), “Ekaterina” (3.64 t/ha), “Ekada 70” and “Simbirtsit” (3.70–3.78 t/ha). Food grain of the first class (with gluten content of more than 32%) was formed by the varieties “Irgina”, “Iren”, “Bazhenka”; the rest varieties formed the second class grain (with gluten content of more than 28%). The ranking method by seven indicators of grain quality allowed us to determine the average rank and to identify the varieties “Irgina” and “Iren” with the highest baking properties (average rank of 1.0–1.7). They are the most promising varieties for the production of food grains in the conditions of the Middle Urals. It is not advisable to use the middle-ripening varieties “Ekada 70” and “Simbirtsit” for this purpose as the average rank of their quality indicators is 7.0–7.1.

The current study was carried out in order to create an early-ripening variety of spring bread wheat with productivity at the level of middle-early or higher, the most adapted to the specific conditions of the Middle Urals. The estimation of the breeding material was carried out in the fields, the soils of which are typical for the Sverdlovsk region and Permsky Krai. During the years of the study, the agroclimatic conditions differed along the growing season. There have been established the dry year of 2016 (90 mm of rain, GTC 0.6) and the moisture years of 2014, 2015, 2017–2019 (with precipitation amount of 247–448 mm, GTC 2.0–3.2). The crossings were carried out between the middle-ripening variety ‘Omskaya 35’ (mother) and the early- ripening variety ‘Iren’ (father). There has been developed the variety that combined high productivity and early maturity. The average productivity of the new variety ‘Ekstra’ in the Competitive Variety Testing in 2014–2019 was 4.07 t/ha, which is on 0.55 t/ha higher than the standard variety ‘Iren’, the maximum productivity was 5.0–6.1 t/ha (2019). The new variety has exceeded the values of the standard variety in such yield structure elements as “seed weight per head”, “1000 grain weight”, “grain content per head”; the accumulation of seeds per day of growing season was 14.2% and at 1 mm of precipitation the value improved till 15.2%. In the ecological testing the variety ‘Ekstra’ exceeded the varieties ‘Iren’, ‘Irgina’ from the State List of Breeding Achievements in the Volga-Vyatka region on 0.56–0.80 t/ha and the middle-early ripening varieties ‘Gornouralskaya’, ‘Bazhenka’, ‘Svecha’, ‘Zlata’ on 0.44–0, 55 t/ha. The variety ‘Ekstra’ is characterized by better energy efficiency parameters than ‘Irgina’, ‘Iren’, ‘Gornouralskaya’, ‘Zlata’. The excess was 9.2–21.9% in terms of total energy in the harvest per hectare, 16.0–40.6% in net energy income, and 4.7–13.1% in bioenergy ratio. The variety reduced energy consumption for the production of 1 ton of grain by 9.5–11.5%. There has been determined a significant advantage of the variety ‘Ekstra’ in terms of the general adaptability, stability, and breeding value of the genotype. In 2020 the variety was included into the State List of Breeding Achievements in the Volga-Vyatka region, Ural, West Siberian regions of the Russian Federation. The variety ‘Ekstra’ has the same parameters of productivity, yield structure elements, adaptability, the accumulation of seeds per day of growing season and per 1 mm of precipitation, energy efficiency of cultivation, as the middle-early ripening standard variety ‘Ekaterina’.

The study has been carried out at the FSBSI «Ural Federal Agrarian Research Center of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences» on the fields of the Krasnoufimsk Breeding Center in 2019–2021. The purpose was to develop new highly productive varieties of spring bread wheat adapted to the climatic conditions of the Middle Urals using parental forms with high breeding indices in hybridization. There has been given a characteristic of the earlymaturing variety ‘Ekstra’ and middle-early maturing ‘Nitsa’ and their parents, namely, ‘Omskaya 35’ and ‘Iren’, ‘Ekaterina’ and ‘Krasnoufimskaya 100’, according to such breeding indices as Mexican, Canadian, Poltava, attraction, productivity, potential head productivity, intensity, micro-distribution, linear head density, grain filling. There has been shown that the productivity advantage of the variety ‘Ekstra’ over the variety ‘Iren’ was 0.37 t/ha (11.1 %) and over thevariety ‘Omskaya 35’ it was 0.31 t/ha (9.1 %). The variety ‘Ekstra’ has combined the high values of six breeding indices from the middle maturing variety ‘Omskaya 35’ and exceeded both parents in the studied indices. The productivity advantage of the variety ‘Nitsa’ was 0.52 t/ha (19.2 %) over the variety ‘Ekaterina’ and over the variety ‘Krasnoufimskaya 100’ it was 0.40 t/ha (14.2 %). It has combined the high values of four indices from the variety ‘Ekaterina’, six from the variety ‘Krasnoufimskaya 100’ and significantly exceeded the parental varieties according to such indices as Poltava, Mexican, microdistribution, attraction, grain filling, intensity. There has been identified a high positive correlation between grain productivity and attraction indices (r = 0.761) and Mexican (r = 0.864), an average positive correlation between indices of intensity (r = 0.601), potential head productivity (r = 0.507), grain filling (r = 0.333). The results have showed that involving parents with high values of breeding indices into hybridization could contribute to the development of new highly productive varieties of spring wheat.

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