Role Of Lentil Genepool (lens Culinaris Medik.) As An Initial Material For Breeding Programs In Azerbaijan

Increasing global temperature recently leads to climatic changes towards more drought conditions over large areas, so drought resistant plants should be wider cultivated. Lentil is a drought resistant crop, commercially cultivated in many regions of the Azerbaijan with periodic droughts. The article contains an overview of aspects of collection, study, augmentation, conservation and utility of the gene pool of legumes in breeding. Studies have shown that one of the main tasks of breeding is the selection of suitable varieties and forms with high productivity and development of new varieties more suitable for mechanical harvesting - tall with high attachment of lower beans, maturing along with nonshattering, as well as resistance to fungal, bacterial and viral diseases. Taking into account the requirements of the present time and agroclimatic potential of the country in recent years, about 450 accessions of lentil were included into collection, presented by expedition collections, local and breeding varieties with known properties, collected from all regions of the country and some introduced varieties obtained from International research center ICARDA. Results of analysis of published data and many years long term research on the physiology and genetics of lentil for breeding were presented in article. Concluded that currently the large amount of genetic knowledge has accumulated, which could be effectively used to breed new lentil cultivars. So, they should be used in order to increase the improvement efficiency of lentil breeding. According to the current requirements of breeding we produced the new variety of lentil "Jasmin", which successfully paseed the state variety trials and released in 2017.