Diversity of photoperiodic responses in oats

Abstract

The article presents the results of an evaluation of the earliness and photoperiodic response (PPR) in the long-day oat accessions of various geographic origin. The material for this study were 139 oat accessions from the global collection of plant genetic resources maintained by the Vavilov Institute (VIR), which included landraces, breeding cultivars, and lines. In addition, the donors of low sensitivity to photoperiod developed at VIR were tested. A preliminary field study of the oat collection for early maturity and growing plants in the vegetation experiment was carried out according to the VIR Guidelines. The early accessions from VIR’s oat collection identified in the field showed a great diversity of their photoperiodic responses during the vegetation experiment in a photoperiod facility. By origin, most of the accessions described in the vegetation experiment as earliness and weakly responsive to photoperiod were from Brazil (66 %); others from the USA, Portugal, Turkey, Colombia and Australia. Most of the Russian cultivars studied (77 %) were sensitive to a short photoperiod. Among donors with different photoperiodic responses, Skorospely 1 and Skorospely 2 were weakly responsive to photoperiod, while Srednespely 1 and Srednespely 2 showed medium responses. Many years of field studies and vegetation experiments with the oat genetic diversity from the VIR global collection have resulted in identifying genotypes characterized by earliness and weak photoperiodic responses. These accessions are of special value for breeders and currently being used to develop new early and productive oat cultivars.

Keywords

• oats
• earliness
• donors
• photoperiodic sensitivity
• photoperiod