NEW VARIETY OF WINTER SOFT WHEAT ‘NAKHODKA’

Winter wheat is a primary food crop, which occupies a significant share in the Russian grain area. The crop uses bioclimatic potential of growing areas better and gives higher yields of grain than spring wheat. Winter wheat on Don produces 50% of gross grain, and in some years it produced till 70%. Nowadays under climate warming conditions it’s necessary to improve the cultivation technologies of the crop and to develop varieties able to adapt to any changes of agro ecological conditions. Plant-breeding makes a great contribution in the increase of gross grain yields. 30-40% of productivity increase of crops in the last 50 years, including that of wheat, is due to the use of new highly productive varieties. Acceleration and modernization of the breeding process, development and introduction of new more productive and high qualitative winter wheat varieties play a great part for a successful increase of grain production and its quality. Breeding of the varieties on productivity increase is one of the most difficult tasks because of a complexity of the trait. Highly productive variety should meet three primary demands: it should be tolerant to unfavourable environment; it should use favourable environment efficiently; it should have high productivity in the productive conditions. A winter wheat variety ‘Nakhodka’, which meets all these demands, was introduced into the State Register of the breeding achievements approved for use in 2015. The article gives morphological and economic-biological characteristics of a new variety of winter soft wheat ‘Nakhodka’