CHARACTERISATION OF AGRONOMIC PERFORMANCE OF BALTIC SPRING BARLEY MATERIAL

Spring barley breeding has been carried out for almost a century in all three Baltic countries. The efforts of breeders have resulted in many new improved varieties released. The goal of our project was to survey the effect of these efforts throughout the century on this crop. The material included in this study consisted of 64 accessions originating from Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania, representing landraces, varieties released from 1927 to 2001, and breeding lines. Six agronomic traits (days to heading, days to maturing, plant height, harvest index, volumetric weight and thousand kernel weight) were recorded during two years (2002 and 2003) at three locations — Priekuïi (Latvia), Landskrona (Sweden) and Bj¸rke (Norway). The differences between spring barley materials of different origin and from different breeding periods were assessed, and variation of their performance in different environments was discussed.