Breeding value of european oat accessions in the environments of Kuban experiment station of VIR

Background. For the present-day oat breeding, the task is to develop adaptive cultivars with high yield potential, high quality of products, fairly early-ripening habit, and resistance to lodging and diseases. Breeding new cultivars with a complex of valuable characters, high yield, and high quality of products under varied environmental conditions requires well-studied source material. Selection of sources according to the basic economically useful traits is one of the main objectives in the study of the global diversity preserved in the oat collection.Results and conclusion. The article presents the results of studying the oat accessions from Western and Central European countries, preserved in the VIR collection, under the conditions of Kuban Experimental Station of VIR (Krasnodar Terr.). Evaluation of the accessions in the field was targeted at such crop characters as the duration of the growing season, resistance to lodging, and field resistance to rust diseases. A structural analysis was performed in the laboratory to measure the weight of 1000 grains, the number of spikelets and grains per panicle, grain weight per panicle and per plant, and percentage of grain hullness. As a result of a three-year comprehensive field study of the newest oat cultivars bred in Western Europe in the environments of Kuban Experimental Station of VIR, sources of traits useful for breeding were identified, such as lodging resistance, field resistance to crown rust, high yield structure components (1000 grain weight, grain weight per panicle, number of grains per panicle, grain productivity). When using source materials in oat breeding practice, in addition to economically important traits, special attention should be paid to grain size, since this character, according to our data, has the most significant correlation with the grain yield of a cultivar. The identified sources of traits valuable for breeding may be included in breeding programs of Krasnodar Territory and other regions of the Russian Federation.