1Institute of Plant Breeding, Seed Science and Population Genetics, 70593, Stuttgart, Germany.
2State Plant Breeding Institute, University of Hohenheim, 70593, Stuttgart, Germany.
3 Ambassador, The Republic of Kosovo, Berlin, Germany.
*Corresponding author's Email: dhillonbaldevsingh@g-mail.com
Plant breeders conduct selection for resistance in environments that maximize disease development. We studied ergot resistance in rye to assess the suitability of locations as selection environment including one very favourable location for disease development. Sixty-five populations and 245 full-sib families were evaluated in six environments across three agro-climatically diverse locations (Eckartsweier, Kleinhohenheim, Oberer- indenhof [OLI]) and 3 years. Significant genotypic and genotype-environment interaction variations were observed for ergot severity. We further partitioned interaction variation due to linear regression of environments (b, genotypic mean at a test location regressed onto average over all environments) and remainder, and also computed simple correlation (r) and coefficient of determination (r2) between these two variables. The b and r2 were used as measures of discrimination ability (DA) and prediction ability (PA) of test locations; respectively. Differences due to heterogeneity among b's were significant in all experiments except one. Ergot severity was distinctly highest at OLI. But OLI had lowest DA and PA whereas Kleinhohenheim had highest values. Our study showed that OLI having higher ergot development, was not the best selection environment. More information encompassing a larger number of environments is needed.
Claviceps purpurea, Discrimination ability, Ergot, Prediction ability, Rye, Secale cereale, Selection environment
