Field and laboratory screening of Romanian maize landraces very resistant to low temperatures

Submountain and mountain areas of Romania have a wide variety of maize landraces thathave not been characterized, and landraces varieties may be a good source of new allelicdiversity for useful traits. There is possible due to studies and comprehensive measures whichcan lead to the maintenance of biodiversity and increase its efficiency. The paper presents theresults of characterization and evaluation of a total of 61 local landraces with cold test index>84%, selected from a total of 300 studied local landraces. They were characterized in thefield and laboratory from morphologic, agronomic and physiologic point of view, as a basisfor use of this maize accessions in a breeding program for creating of extra earlier hybrids.Landraces maize accessions: SVGB-1790, SVGB-7754, SVGB-8012, SVGB-14453, SVGB-5172 were identified with high yield components traits and extremely resistant to lowtemperatures (K>0,92).Utilization of these local landraces as starting material can lead to the identification of usefulgenes sources for improvement of important agronomic characters of maize (yield capacity,precocity, resistance to low temperatures and to Fusarium infection).This accessions have a good agronomic stability, could be potentials donors of genes toimprove maize tolerance to low temperature in order to create hybrids for cold and wet areas

Quality characteristics of European avena genetic resources collections

International audienceThe research project "Avena genetic resources for quality in human consumption" (AVEQ, 2007-2011) aimed at the agronomic and qualitative evaluation of European oat germplasm; for this purpose a working collection with more than 600 accessions, including modern commercial cultivars and wild species, was used. The working collection was split in two groups and field grown in 2008 and 2009 in seven different locations: Estonia, Sweden, Poland, France, Italy, Romania and Bulgaria. For each accession morphological and technological traits were registered. The results of this study indicated that modern varieties are significantly superior to old varieties and wild accessions in terms of yield and grain technological quality (seed weight and test weight). A wide variability was observed for quantitative and qualitative traits, and some genotypes potentially interesting for breeding programs were identified