PECULIARITIES OF BARLEY BREEDING ON DON

Barley is the main grain forage crop. Barley breeding on Don comes back to the beginning of the XX-th century; the breeding work was carried out with the method of individual selection, and with the method of hybridization since 1927. Then they started to use the method of individual selection from the best local varieties and their hybridization with the best collection samples. The principal results of barley breeding were obtained when A.A. Sokol became the supervisor of the breeding process of barley in 1962. Under his supervision the sowing of the ‘dvuruchka’ varieties in the summer periods was one of the methods to develop winter tolerant forms of winter barley in the Donskoy breeding center. Due to the method the forms with high winter resistance used as initial breeding material were obtained. The main breeding method was intraspecific intervarietal hybridization of the varieties having different biologic-geographic origin. The intervarietal hybridization using the forms and varieties with different ecologic-geographic origin and the goal-oriented sorting resulted in the obtaining of the winter barley varieties with high winter tolerance, productivity, resistance to lodging and to main diseases of the crop. The seventeen of them were sent to the State variety Testing of RF, Ukraine, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Belarus; the eight varieties were introduced in the State Register of breeding achievements of RF. Properly chosen direction of selection, a large scale and the goal-oriented sorting determined the success in creating of local highly productive drought-resistant varieties of spring barley with a complex resistance to diseases and lodging. During the whole period of breeding work 30 varieties of spring barley were sent the State Variety Centers to study; and 18 of them were zoned or introduced into the State Register of breeding achievements of RF