Variation of European ecotypes of perennial ryegrass (Lolium perenne L.) in Poland.

摘要

Morphological, phenological and other useful traits were studied in 156 European ryegrass ecotypes (including 4 standard cultivars) grown under different management regimes (conservation and frequent cutting) in Poland. During 3 successive years (1996-99), 22 qualitative and quantitative traits described the variation in the "main collection". On the basis of cluster analysis, a "sub-collection" of 28 ecotypes from 9 clusters was selected and evaluated for 71 traits in the field under the same management regimes applied to the main collection. Variation among ecotypes allowed the possibility to indicate the following regions of ecotype origin in Europe: South Europe, West Europe, North-Middle Europe, Romania and Hungary. None of the tested ecotypes outyielded the control cultivars. However, few ecotypes exhibited better particular traits, such as better winter performance and faster spring regrowth. Traits associated with inflorescence morphology (distance between florets in spikelet, distance between spikelets in spike and length of spikelet) appeared to be the most stable traits, in contrast to abundance of inflorescences, tendency to produce inflorescences in year of sowing and green matter yield of first cut. High differentiation of ecotypes indicate the existence of many botanical cultivars and ecotypes of transition nature..