Biological and Agronomic Characterization of Improved Alkali Grass Genotypes (Puccinellia ciliata Bor) in the Aegean Region of Turkey

Abstract

Puccinellia is one of the plants with high performance in unfavourable soil conditions. Fourteen super genotypes developed by the recurrent selection method were grown at three different sowing times in order to characterize the alkali grass genotypes for biological and agronomic traits and to determine the relationships with seed yield in the Aegean region of Turkey in 2020. The interaction between sowing time and genotypes was found to be significant for all traits. The seed yield of the 14 Puccinellia genotypes varied between 28.9 kg ha-1 and 90.2 kg ha-1 according to the average of 3 sowing times, and the grand mean was 61.3 kg ha-1. Genotypes with high yielding were defined as thick-leaved (123.3±12.1), large bulliform cells (42.4±5.2), high chlorophyll content (5.7±0.3), large stomatal area (199.6±5.9) and fewer stomata (20.9±1.3). In conclusion, biological characteristics such as stoma area and number, leaf and bulliform structure and chlorophyll content should be used as selection criteria for production.