The response of rate and duration of grain filling to long-term selection for yield in Italian durum wheats
Rosella Motzo A B , Francesco Giunta A and Giovanni Pruneddu AA Dipartimento di Scienze agronomiche e Genetica vegetale agraria, Facoltà di Agraria, Università di Sassari, Italy, Via De Nicola, 07100 Sassari, Italy.
B Corresponding author. Email: motzo@uniss.it
Crop and Pasture Science 61(2) 162-169 https://doi.org/10.1071/CP09191
Submitted: 2 July 2009 Accepted: 9 December 2009 Published: 8 February 2010
Abstract
Genetic advance in durum wheat (Triticum turgidum subsp. durum) grain yield in Italy has been achieved by bringing forward flowering time, achieving a larger number of grains per unit area, and altering the pattern of senescence. The performance, in the absence of any moisture stress, of a set of 6 Italian durum wheat cultivars released over the past 100 years was compared under 4 environments and 2 nitrogen rates, to ascertain whether the changes brought about by selection for yield have also indirectly affected the rate and duration of grain filling. Grain filling lasted 35–36 days in all cultivars except ‘Ichnusa’ (39 days), although modern cultivars flowered earlier than older ones. The lack of any breeding effect on grain-filling duration also meant that the later old cultivars were not negatively affected by the higher ambient temperatures during their grain filling. The maximum rate of grain filling ranged from 2.4 to 3.3 mg/day and showed a highly significant negative correlation with the year of cultivar release (r = –0.91*). The variation in grain weight, significant but not correlated with the year of release, was associated with the rate of grain filling, which was in turn related to the grain number per unit area. A compensating variability still exists among modern Italian cultivars in both grain number and grain-filling rate, which demonstrates that durum wheat grain yield can be increased while also preserving high grain weights.
Additional keywords: breeding, senescence.
Acknowledgments
We thank Mario Sanna, Domenico Carta, and Tonina Derosas for technical assistance in field management and subsequent analyses. The anonymous referee’s comments and suggestions on the first draft of the paper are gratefully acknowledged.
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