The analysis of dynamics of winter barley sown area and productivity in the Russian Federation

The article presents the main biologic and economic advantages of winter barley, shows the main directions of its use in the industrial processing. The article informs about the dynamics of the sown area and productivity of winter barley in Russia, their distribution through Federal Districts. There has been established that the North-Caucasus and Southern Federal Districts are the main winter barley producers with 153.6–245.6 thousand hectares and 131.2–28.7 thousand hectares respectively. The use of great number of seeds of mass repro­duction together with low sowing traits significantly reduces productivity and qualitative characteristics of the obtained products. The article gives the analysis of winter barley seed-growing from 2012 to 2017. There has been analyzed data on the amount of original sown (OS-1.2), basic (BS) and reproductive seeds (RS1, RS2, RS3). There has been determined a tendency to an increase in the volume of sown seeds of winter barley in the total area from 54.3 thousand hwt in 2013 up to 74.1 thousand hwt in 2016. The largest amount of sown seeds of the basic seeds (14.1 thousand hwt) took place in 2015, the smallest one (6.3 thousand hwt) occurred in 2017. It was found that the number of reproductive seeds remains high and ranges from 78.8 to 88.5% with an annual reduction in volumes in absolute terms. In this regard, there is a periodical need to update the seeds of the used winter barley varieties. In order to stabilize the winter barley productivity, it is necessary to sow the seeds of varieties recommended for sowing in the Rostov region by the State Commission for Variety Testing