Cultivar-Environment Interactions in Red Clover

Abstract

The performance of nine double-cut and three single-cut red clover (Trifolium pratense L.) cultivars was studied at five locations in Atlantic Canada. The single-cut clovers survived relatively well at all locations while the double-cut clovers did not survive well at one location during the first winter. An analysis of data for total dry-matter yield from five environments, i.e., location-year combinations, showed that the single-cut clovers outyielded the double-cut clovers in Newfoundland but yielded lower at the other locations. Among the double-cut cultivars, Florex, Lakeland, Tapiopoly, and Violetta were found to be desirable cultivars because they had a high mean yield and did not yield lower than the population average at any of the five environments. A large cultivar-environment interaction variance was detected for the double-cut cultivars; therefore, at least 15 test environments are required in future trials in order to detect a yield difference of 6% by multiple comparison procedures.Key words: Trifolium pratense L., stability

Genotypic differences in red clover (Trifolium pratense L.) response under severe water deficit

“…The observed differences in drought tolerance strategies could be partly due to the differences in growth habit between single-and double-cut red clover. Single-cut red clover populations are lower growing and they do not flower or make stems in the seeding year, instead maintaining low, vegetative growth in the fall, a characteristic which has been linked with winter hardiness and increased stand persistence (Choo et al 1984;Christie and Choo 1991). A similar characteristic in alfalfa is termed fall dormancy and has not only been associated with greater winter hardiness Weishaar et al 2005) but increased drought tolerance (Pembleton et al 2010;Pembleton and Satish 2014).…”

“…Single-cut red clover populations are low growing and do not flower or produce stems in the seeding year (Bowley et al 1984). Low, vegetative first year growth allows single-cut varieties to enter the winter as a rosette, and has been associated with increased winter hardiness and stand persistence in these populations (Choo et al 1984;Christie and Choo 1991). Single-cut populations have also been shown to display better grazing tolerance (Brummer and Moore 2000).…”

Stability in Fruit Yield, Soluble Solids, and Citric Acid of Eight Machine-harvested Processing Tomato Cultivars in Northern Ohio

“…Several methods have been developed (6,7,9) to determine the yield stability of genotypes across sites and seasons. A method widely used has been that of Finley and Wilkinson (9), where linear regression analysis was used for measuring a genotype's relative response to environmental variability.…”