The new early-maturing winter bread wheat variety ‘Zhavoronok’

There has been presented the characteristics of the new early-maturing winter bread wheat variety ‘Zhavoronok’ according to economically valuable traits and properties. The development of early-maturing grain crop varieties is one of the main issues of grain production. The combination of a relatively short vegetation period with high productivity in one genotype helps to solve a number of agricultural concerns. This allows using techniques more systematic, reducing the intensity of harvesting and yield loss significantly, which occur when cultivating simultaneously maturing varieties on large areas. The purpose of the current study was to evaluate the new early-maturing winter bread wheat variety ‘Zhavoronok’ on the basis of a set of economically valuable traits. The study was carried out in 2015–2019 with such forecrops as maize for grain, weedfree fallow, peas and sunflower. In the department of winter wheat breeding and seed production of the FSBSI Agricultural Research Center “Donskoy” a lot of work is being done on winter wheat breeding, and one of the important directions is the development of early-maturing varieties. The winter bread wheat variety ‘Zhavoronok’ has been included in the State List of Breeding Achievements of the Russian Federation since 2020 and approved for use the North Caucasus and Nizhne-Volga regions. According to the length of the growing period, it belongs to the early-maturing group. Its high and stable productivity with various forecrops is explained by a complex of positive economically valuable traits and properties, such as high productivity of a head, resistance to lodging and brown rust, high frost resistance (the same as that of the variety ‘Don 107’). The variety ‘Zhavoronok’ is capable of producing good yields and full grain in arid years, its early maturity allows it to ‘escape’ drought, disease and other unfavorable conditions.