Published in Scientific Bulletin. Series F. Biotechnologies, Vol. XX
Written by Ancuţa CRÎNGAŞU (BĂRBIERU)
The development of the winter pea crop represent a major challenge to expand plant protein production in temperate areas. Breeding winter cultivars requires the combination of freezing tolerance as well as high seed productivity and quality. Winter peas have some advantages over spring peas like: better establishment and more efficient use of humidity during the winter season, which makes it less vulnerable to drought over the spring, frequently in Romania in the last years; winter peas can be sown in mixture with some cereal (barley, triticale, grasses) for obtaining high nutritive green forage; earlier harvest; has a longer vegetation period and get higher productivity and more stable yield than spring peas type. In this paper we present data obtained from the first F3 lines of winter peas obtained in the NARDI-Fundulea program with the germplasm of winter peas from USA and Austria. A number of 176 lines, selected from winter/winter and winter/spring crosses pea genotypes, have been tested in preliminary trials in 2015. Data for yield showed a large variation, but some lines over yield significantly the winter control (Specter, Checo and Windham). The conclusion of this preliminary study is that will be possible to realize the genetic progress in breeding in winter peas, to select the new varieties with good enough winter hardiness and being with high yield, different earliness or plant height. Of course, the breeding program just started, from a short time, and it is needed to improve the genetic bases of the germplasm use for all traits, but mainly for winter hardiness.
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