Economically Valuable Traits of Alfalfa Plants in The Variety Testing Nursery

Abstract

The article presents the three-year results for 2018-2020 of studies on height, leafiness of plants, protein content, as well as hay yield in alfalfa samples in the nursery of the 2018 sowing variety test. The studied accessions and the standard variety Tashkent-1 almost did not differ in plant height the difference was only 1-2 cm. plants was higher than the standard by 3-2cm. The highest leafiness of plants was in samples C-3646 (variety Zia, USA), C-3327 (I.o. Prima, France) and C-3649 (F2 Tashkent-721x group of varieties) 48.1%, 47.5% and 46.4% respectively, which exceeded the standard variety. The high protein content of hay enhances the nutritional quality of alfalfa. According to this indicator, the data obtained show that the varieties S-3649, S-3646 and S-3647 had superiority over the standard variety Tashkent-1 (17.85%) by 1.03-1.32%. According to the total hay yield for two years, samples S-3647 and S-3649 were 108.6% and 106.1% higher in comparison with the standard variety (129.0 c/ha). And in the rest of the samples, the hay yield was lower than that of the Tashkent-1 variety. According to the combination of a set of traits, samples C-3647 (M.o. from variety 2711x group of varieties) and C3649 (F2 Tashkentskaya-721x group of varieties) are of the greatest interest for breeding.