CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Barley has been a crop traditionally destined for low productive environments in Argentina as well as worldwide. The objective of the work was to analyze the recent genetic progress for yield in malting barley cultivars in Argentina. A field experiment was carried out at the Faculty of Agronomy UBA combining 10 cultivars of malting barley released to the Argentinean market during the last 40 years and 3 sowing dates (early, S1; intermediate, S2; late, S3). Within each sowing date, the experimental design was completely randomized with three replicates. The experiment was conducted with irrigation, high soil nutrient availability, and control of pests, weeds, and diseases. At maturity, grain yield and its numerical component were measured. Mean yield in S1, S2, and S3 was 8209, 6261, and 3271 kg/ha, respectively. The genetic progress for grain yield was 131 kg/ha.year (R2= 0.68**) in S1, 40 kg/ha.year in S2 (R2= 0.27*), and without a significant trend in S3. The genetic progress in relative terms with respect to the mean yield of each sowing date was 1.5 and 0.6 %/year in S1 and S2, respectively, and null in S3. Grain number per m2 showed a significant trend with the year of release of the cultivars only in S1 (R2= 0.48**), while grain weight showed a positive trend in the three sowing dates (S1, R2=0.64**; S2, R2=0.34*; S3, R2=0.50**). In conclusion, the higher the productivity of the environment, the greater the genetic progress tended to be, both in absolute (kg/ha.year) and relative (%/year) terms. The positive trend of grain weight with the year of release of the cultivars revealed the relevance of grain quality as target of the breeding programs due to grain weight condition variables that define commercial quality such as grain nitrogen concentration and screening.

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