Winter rye grain quality of hybrid and population cultivars

Rye (Secale cereale L.) is an important European crop used for food that is grownprimarily in Eastern, Central and Northern Europe. Consuming rye grain products provides a richsource of dietary fibre as well as several bioactive compounds with potentially positive healthimplications. The goal of the research was to compare the rye grain quality of hybrid andpopulation cultivars. A field trial was carried out in Priekuli Research Centre, Institute ofAgricultural Resourses and Economic (in Latvia) during a three-year period: 2014/2015,2015/2016, and 2016/2017. The trial included population winter rye cultivars ‘Kaupo’, ‘Amilo’,‘Dankowskie Amber’ and hybrid rye cultivars ‘Brasetto’, ‘Su Drive’, ‘Su Mephisto’. Rye grainquality indices were analysed at Latvia University of Life Sciences and Technologies, in Grainand Seed Research laboratory. Average data in our investigation (three years) show that cultivar,crop-year (weather conditions) and cultivar×crop-year interaction significantly (P < 0.05)affected rye grain protein content, starch content and Hagberg falling number. A significantnegative correlation was found between protein content and starch content r = -0.937 (populationcultivars grain), r = -0.944 (hybrid cultivars grain), medium strong negative correlation wasfound between protein content and falling number, respective r = -0.549 and r = -0.573.Differences between hybrid cultivar grain protein content, falling number and starch contentcomparing with population cultivar grains were not observed. The results of the current researchshow that the quality of all the studied cultivars meets the requirements for high-grade rye grainsfor food consumption.