Open AccessStudies on genetic variation in reed canary grass, Phalaris arundinacea L.: III. Seed yield and seed yield components
Author(s) -
øSTREM LIV
Publication year - 1988
Publication title -
hereditas
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.819
H-Index - 50
eISSN - 1601-5223
pISSN - 0018-0661
DOI - 10.1111/j.1601-5223.1988.tb00296.x
Subject(s) - phalaris arundinacea , biology , panicle , agronomy , inflorescence , population , yield (engineering) , phalaris minor , forage , botany , horticulture , crop , ecology , demography , sociology , wetland , materials science , metallurgy
Norwegian, Russian, and North‐American populations of reed canarygrass, Phalaris arundinacea L., have been described in previous papers in this series as to the variation in alkaloid type and ‐concentration and forage yield and quality. The present paper presents the seed yielding aspects and gives a general view of the results. The local materials were generally late, though, as to their seed yielding capacity they were inferior only to the selected Canadian population Castor, which was superior in all characters. The two Russian populations showed genetic instability. Broad sense heritabilities over all clones were estimated to 0.77 and 0.84 for earliness in 1984 and 1985. respectively, and to 0.49,0.41 and 0.20 for number of panicles, seed yield, and estimated seed yield per panicle, respectively, in one year (1986). Concerning the total investigation, wide genotypic variations were obtained in all populations for most of the characters studied. Clear differences were revealed between the local adapted populations, still with wild type characters, and the selected populations. No significant relationships were found between the alkaloid concentration and the other characters studied, though the populations were different in this aspect. Synthetic varieties will be established from the present material.