Аграрный вестник Урала № 09 (115) 2013

Агрономия

FORMATION OF ALFALFA SEED YIELD IN THE NORTH TRANS-URALS

In the North Trans-Urals the alfalfa gives low seed yields. As a rule, it is a result of weather within the period of budding and flowering, as well as a lack of pollinizers during the flowering period. The alfalfa has a herbaceous, branchy stem. Each stem has 10–20 internodes. In the first year of life, the alfalfa forms 3 stems, within the second year a plant has 15–17, in the third year it has more than 20 stems. Alfalfa seed crops have up to 250 stems per 1 m2. Studies have shown that the number of medic generative shoots is 137–150 pcs./m2. The number of inflorescences on generative shoots of studied varieties were 14–15 pcs. During the study the number of flowers per inflorescence averaged 6.9 pcs. for the variety Omskaya 7 and it is 13.2 pcs. for the variety Bystraya. In general, the variety Bystraya forms more flowers in the inflorescence (91 %) than the variety Omskaya 7. Our studies have determined the seed production potential (SPP). For the years of our studies the average SPP is 9.2 dt/ha for the variety Omskaya 7 and 21.8 dt/ha for the variety Bystraya. The seed production potential for the studied varieties depended on the weather. In dry years, with a high number of effective temperatures (2009–2010) the SPP for the variety Omskaya 7 was 10.9 dt/ha, and in the year with an excess of precipitations during flowering and pod formation (2011) it was 5.8 dt/ha. For the variety Bystraya it was 26.3 and 11.7 dt/ha correspondingly. Actual seed yield for the second year of life was 0.8 and 1.6 dt/ha, for the third one it was 0.9 and 2.1 dt/ha, for the fourth year it was 0.7 and 1.1 dt/ha correspondingly for the variety Omskaya 7 and the variety Bystraya. The alfalfa seed production potential in the North Trans-Urals is more than 11–13 times higher than the actual seed yeilds.

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Keywords:

variety, alfalfa, generative shoot, inflorescence, flower, pod, seed production potential, seed yield

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