MORPHOLOGICAL, AGRONOMIC, AND QUALITY PROPERTIES OF THE TWO DEVELOPED POPULATIONS OF ALFALFA (Medicago sativa L.) UNDER NON-IRRIGATED CONDITIONS OF SEMIARID REGIONS

Abstract

Alfalfa is the most important crop in Turkey but there is no alfalfa cultivar developed for rainfed conditions under the semiarid regions in Turkey. For this reason, new cultivars are needed for using of rangeland improvement, artificial pasture establishment, and hay production. For this reason, the two alfalfa populations were developed by the mass selection method in the breeding project. These two advanced populations (L-533, and L-1739) were examined with the three control cultivars of alfalfa (Bilensoy-80, Savaş and Kayseri) for morphological, yield and quality traits in two various regions of Turkey in three experimental years. The present study results demonstrated that there were significant differences in terms of the plant height, but no differences in stem diameter, and stem number among the study genotypes. When evaluating all genotypes, the L-533 and Kayseri had the highest yield value, but the Savaş cultivar was the lowest. As compared to Bilensoy-80 cultivar, the L-533, and L-1739 populations gave higher at 22.27 and 11.57% in green forage yield; 18.30 and 10.13% in dry forage yields, respectively. In addition, statistically significant differences were found for ADF, NDF, and digestible dry matter yield among the study genotypes, except crude protein contents. Moreover, the highest crude protein content and digestible dry matter yield were obtained from the L-533 and L-1739, but the L-533 had also the lowest NDF content. The present study result showed that the L-533, and L-1739 had high adaptation capability, excellent yield, and good quality performance in dry conditions under semi-arid regions and could be used as commercial cultivars.