The yield potential of 60 spring barley varieties was examined under controlled drought and natural conditions in the years 2011-2013. The studied varieties were genotyped with the 1536-SNP barley oligonucleotide assay. In experiments with controlled drought conditions, the grain yield, 1,000-grain weight, number of productive tillers and length of the main stem were measured. Physicochemical properties such as the specific surface area, water adsorption energy, fractal dimension and nanopore radius of the plant leaves were determined and correlated with yield-forming traits. Field trials were conducted over 3 years at 14 locations, where along with the yield-related traits, monthly rainfall and average temperature were monitored. Five varieties of high yield and five varieties relatively stable under both semi-controlled and natural conditions were distinguished. The yield-related traits observed in various locations were related to environmental variables relevant to water availability. The sum of the rainfall in April and May was negatively correlated with the 1,000-grain weight and positively with the plant height. Positive relationships were found between plant height and temperatures in June and July. Five markers detected earlier as linked to the quantitative trait loci in the mapping populations were identified to have a coherent effect among varieties of various pedigree.

Increasing productivity through improvement of photosynthesis in faba bean breeding programmes requires understanding of the genetic control of photosynthesis-related traits. Hence, we investigated the gene action of leaf area, gas exchange traits, canopy temperature, chlorophyll content, chlorophyll fluorescence parameters and biomass. We chose inbred lines derived from cultivars 'Aurora' (Sweden) and 'Melodie' (France) along with an Andean accession, ILB 938, crossed them (Aurora/2 x Melodie/2, ILB 938/2 x Aurora/2 and Melodie/2 x ILB 938/2), and prepared the six standard generations for quantitative analysis (P-1, P-2, F-1, F-2, B-1, and B-2). Gene action was complex for each trait, involving additive and dominance gene actions and interactions. Additive gene action was important for SPAD, photosynthetic rate, stomatal conductance and F-v/F-m. Dominance effect was important for biomass production. It is suggested that breeders selecting for productivity can maximize genetic gain by selecting early generations for canopy temperature, SPAD and F-v/F-m, then later generations for biomass. The information on genetics of various contributing traits of photosynthesis will assist plant breeders in choosing an appropriate breeding strategy for enhancing productivity in faba bean.

The pot experiment with spring barley was carried on in 2011 and 2013-2014 years. The total number of 263 genotypes was tested against short-term drought stresses introduced at the tillering stage for 11 days or at full flag leaf stage for 14 days. At the control treatment, plants were grown at the optimal soil moisture level of 13-15% weight by weight for the whole vegetation period and in the stress treatments, the moisture was maintained at the level of 5-6% weight by weight. Spring barley showed a higher tolerance to the drought stress at tillering stage than at flag leaf stage. Barley genotypes differed in their response to terminal drought stresses due to diverse ability for regenerating after the stress removal. The resistance and tolerance of the genotypes to the drought stress imposed at tillering stage resulted from their ability to produce additional fertile tillers and to the stress at flag leaf stage by compensation of the reduced grain number per spike through increasing the weight of 1000 grains. The grain yield of tolerant genotypes named as MCAM: 85, 86, 102, 128 and 129 was stable independent on water supply and the most suitable for breeders in Poland.

Alternative management practices such as no‐tillage compared to conventional tillage are expected to recover or increase soil quality and productivity, even though all of these aspects are rarely studied together. Long‐term field experiments ( LTE s) enable analysis of alternative management practices over time. This study investigated a total of 251 European LTE s in which alternative management practices such as crop rotation, catch crops, cover crops/green manure, no‐tillage, non‐inversion tillage and organic fertilization were applied. Response ratios of indicators for soil quality, climate change and productivity between alternative and reference management practices were derived from a total of 260 publications. Both positive and negative effects of alternative management practices on the different indicators were shown and, as expected, no alternative management practice could comply with all objectives simultaneously. Productivity was hampered by non‐inversion tillage, FYM amendments and incorporation of crop residues. SOC contents were increased significantly following organic fertilizers and non‐inversion tillage. GHG emissions were increased by slurry application and incorporation of crop residues. Our study showed that alternative management practices beneficial to one group of indicators (e.g. organic fertilizers for biological soil quality indicators) are not necessarily beneficial to other indicators (e.g. increase of crop yields). We conclude that LTE s are valuable for finding ways forward in protecting European soils as well as finding evidence‐based alternative management practices for the future; however, experiments should focus more on biological soil quality indicators as well as GHG emissions to enable better evaluation of trade‐offs and mutual benefits of management practices.

•In European long-term experiments, bovine farmyard manure and slurry reduced yields by 9% compared to mineral fertilizers applied at similar nitrogen (N) rates.•Soil organic carbon increased by 33% and 17% due to farmyard manure and slurry applications, respectively, compared to mineral fertilizers applied at similar N rates.•Mineral N integration to farmyard manure improved yield, but reduced N use efficiency and increased soil organic matter to a lesser extent.•Mineral N integration to slurry improved crop and efficiency indicators to the levels of mineral fertilizer only.•Farmyard manure efficiency is higher than European national legislation standards.

•Transgenerational effects of drought on barley shoots and roots were observed.•Drought affecting two barley generations increased the contribution of thin roots.•Seed-derived nutrients explained the observed transgenerational effects of drought.

The study was conducted in scope of Catch-C project “Compatibility of agricultural management practices and types of farming in the EU to enhance climate change mitigation and soil health” (7FP), realized in 2012–2014 by the consortium of partners from 10 European countries ( http://www.catch-c.eu ). This work reports the effects of soil management practices – under different soil and climatic conditions – on the selected soil chemical quality indicators, based on the analysis of data extracted from literature on long term experiments (LTEs) in Europe, as well as from LTEs held by the Catch-C consortium partners. The dataset related to soil chemical quality indicators consisted of 1044 records and referred to 59 long-term trials. The following indicators of chemical soil quality were analyzed: pH, N total content, N total stock, C:N ratio, N mineral content, P and K availability. They are the most frequently used indicators in the European literature on long-term experiments collected in the Catch-C project database. Soil organic carbon, however, the most important indicator was not presented here, due to it was covered by a separate study on indicators for climate change mitigation. The indicators were analyzed using their response ratio (RR) to a management practice. For a given treatment (management practice), this ratio was calculated as the quotient between the indicator value obtained in the treatment, and the indicator value in the reference treatment. The examples were: rotation (with cereals, with legume crops, with tuber or root crops, with grassland) vs. adequate monoculture, catch/cover crops vs. no catch/cover crops, no-tillage and no-inversion tillage vs. conventional tillage, mineral fertilization vs. no fertilization, organic fertilization (compost, farmyard manure, slurry) vs. mineral fertilization at the same available nitrogen input, crop residue incorporation vs. removal. All tested practices influenced soil chemical quality indicators. Both positive and negative effects were observed. When the RR values of seven soil chemical quality indicators were considered in an overall evaluation – based on their significance level, the number of indicators positively affected, and the size of the effects – the best practices among those tested were: farmyard manure application, no-inversion tillage, compost application, mineral fertilization, and no-tillage.

Studies that provide representative insights for determining yield through its related traits during the ontogeny of modern cultivars subjected to sources of environmental variation are limited for different crops, including wheat. Most of the empirical evidence on the relationships between the yield of small grain cereal crops and its contributing traits has been obtained under dry or semidry conditions. The aims of this paper were to (1) illustrate how an path analysis can be used to clarify and interpret the relationships between grain yield (GY), yield components, and other yield-related traits of 25 winter wheat cultivars subjected to sources of environmental variation and (2) determine how the yield-related traits contribute to the yield variation. The data used in this analysis were generated from multi-environment trials across wheat-growing areas in Poland. Using Ward's clustering procedure was capable of identifying the most critical predictor traits of the yield components and their contributions to cultivar-focused GY variation. Our findings document, confirm, and improve the basic biological understanding of how to grow modern wheat cultivars for high GY through effectively stimulating the improvement of yield-related traits through the optimization of developmental stage-based agronomic strategies. Our results confirmed empirically that modern European wheat cultivars grown in a temperate climate require favorable conditions, the use of appropriate N fertilizer and growth regulators, and the application of fungicide to protect against leaf diseases and to provide conditions that effectively increase the time to anthesis, the Leaf Area Index per spike at anthesis, and the grain filling duration, and reduce plant height and flag leaf disease severity, thus leading to a high GY. A high yield level is obtained by the performance of preferred yield-related traits that can maintain the three yield components at relatively high levels.

Inherent in the concept of good agricultural practice (BMP) is that it improves resource use efficiency, mitigates environmental impact or increases farm profitability. However, it is usually impossible to achieve all the objectives, and trade-offs need to be accepted, such as a reduction in productivity together with a reduction in costs or an increase of soil organic matter. A European FP7 project, Catch-C (http://www.catch-c.eu) analyses the effects that different management practices have on productivity, mitigation of climate change and chemical, physical and biological soil fertility, based on simple indicators. Such indicators were collected from international literature, national scientific or technical journals, or grey literature that dealt with long-term field trials in Europe. We collected and analysed data from more than 350 experiments. This paper presents the overall results of the effects of a series of BMP have on crop productivity, soil nitrogen (N) uptake, N use efficiency end N balance. Important interactions with soil and climate types, crop and duration of the experiment were noticed for most BMPs. Rotations, also including double cropping, were among practices with more positive effects of productivity and N indicators. A slight reduction of yield counteracted benefits to soil quality and to climate change mitigation of minimum and no tillage, and of organic fertilisers.

Precision agriculture (PA) is a management method that measures and manages within-field variability. Previously, PA has required expansive and time consuming measurement of soil physical and chemical properties. In this paper we use a new and more rapid method of data collection based on Visible and Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (VIS–NIRS) in the 400–2200nm spectral range to predict soil organic carbon (SOC), plant available [Mg, P, K], pH and texture at the farm scale. The experimental work was done at the experimental Station at Baborówko (52.583778°N, 16.647353°E) in Poland. The focus of the paper was to look at the effect of the number of samples on the calibration. Different calibration schemes using PLS regression with calibration datasets of different sizes were applied. The best predictions were obtained using K-means clustering for calibration sample selection. Using this scheme and 79 calibration samples, satisfactory results were obtained predicting SOC (r2=0.63; RMSEP=0.13%) and soil texture (e.g. clay, r2=0.71; RMSEP=0.36%). The use of the entire dataset did not improve significantly the prediction ability (r2=0.72; RMSEP=0.12% for SOC and r2=0.73; RMSEP=0.32% for clay). Reasonable results were obtained for available Mg content (r2=0.53; RMSEP=1.54mg.100g−1) and pH (r2=0.52; RMSEP=0.34 pH unit). Available [P, K] gave unsatisfactory results (r2<0.5 for both; RMSEP 6.27 and 3.31mg.100g−1 respectively). The maps (SOC and pH) generated with the K-means clustering scheme were compared with those obtained with reference data. The results show that the VIS–NIRS method is suitable to adequately predict SOC and texture using 1.5 samples per ha (79 samples). The method can also be useful as a rough screening for pH and available Mg thereby significantly reducing the cost of mapping.

The purpose of our study was to estimate the interaction between N fertilization and a plant protection program in oat production under different weather conditions. The studies were conducted at the Grabow Experimental Station of the Institute of Soil Science and Plant Cultivation in Pulawy, Poland, in 2005-07. Oat was cultivated after winter triticale at 5 different levels of nitrogen fertilizers: 0, 30, 60, 90, and 120 kg N.ha(-1) and under 3 plant protection strategies: A, B, and C were differentiated by biologically active ingredients. Grain yield, its components and quality were examined. The maximization of oat productivity and grain quality can be possible only under proper moisture conditions at a period from the beginning of the tilling stage (BBCH 21) to the end of panicle emergence (BBCH 59). The component deciding grain yield is a high number of grains per panicle. Both nitrogen fertilization and plant protection have a combined effect on oat grain, protein, and oil yields. Maximum grain yield increase equaled 2.26 t.ha(-1), protein yield 282 kg.ha(-1), and oil yield 73 kg.ha(-1).

Celem pracy była ocena wpływu interakcji nawożenia azotem i ochrony roślin na wielkość plonu ziarna i białka jęczmienia jarego. Badania prowadzono w Rolniczym Zakładzie Doświadczalnym IUNG-PIB Grabów w latach 2005–2007. Jęczmień jary uprawiano w stanowisku po pszenicy ozimej na 5 poziomach nawożenia azotem: 0, 30, 60, 90 i 120 kg N·ha-1. Jako czynnik chemicznej ochrony roślin przed chorobami grzybowymi zastosowano środki chemiczne zgodnie z programami trzech firm: Syngenta, DuPont i BASF. Po zbiorach określano plon ziarna i elementy struktury oraz zawartość i plon białka. Stwierdzono, że warunkiem uzyskania wysokich plonów ziarna i białka jęczmienia paszowego były sprzyjające warunki pogody, charakteryzujące się ciepłą i wilgotną pogodą w fazach krzewienia i wypełniania ziarna oraz intensywne nawożenie azotem. O wysokim plonie ziarna w takich warunkach decydowała liczba ziaren w kłosie i masa tysiąca ziaren. Jednoczesny wpływ nawożenia azotem i chemicznej ochrony roślin przed chorobami na plon ziarna i białka jęczmienia jarego miał charakter addytywny.

We studied the course of early leaf area expansion and specific leaf area (S-LA) in potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) and wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) genotypes and tested whether air temperature explains differences in these courses within different environments. Such knowledge can be used to improve crop growth modelling. The relative rate of leaf area expansion (R-L) of potato and wheat decreased with thermal time, but was nearly linear up to a leaf area index (L) of 1.0. The R-L (L < 1; mean: 17.9 x 10(-3)degrees C-1 d(-1)) of potato showed an interaction between genotype and environment, and varied with year. The R-L (L < 1; mean: 7.1 x 10(-3)degrees C-1 d(-1)) of winter wheat was lower than that of spring wheat (mean: 10.9 x 10(-3)degrees C-1 d(-1)), and both varied with year. S-LA of potato increased nearly linearly with thermal time from 5 to 15 m(2) kg(-1) at 50 % emergence, to 20 to 25 m(2) kg(-1) at 155 degrees Cd, and then decreased slightly. The S-LA of both winter and spring wheat began at 16 to 23 m(2) kg(-1) and in most cases increased slightly with thermal time. In potato, regression parameters of S-LA with thermal time were affected by environment (management conditions and year) and genotype; in wheat they were affected by environment (year and site). Treatment effects on R-L of potato were not correlated with those on S-LA, and were only partly correlated for wheat. Therefore we conclude that the early foliar expansion of potato is associated with a strong increase in S-LA, and not so for wheat. For both crops the course of early leaf area expansion and of S-LA with air temperature is not robust over environments and genotypes. The consequences of these results for modelling are discussed. (C) 2000 Annals of Botany Company.

The trial was run in the years 1995-1996 on concrete-lined plots filled with soils of the most frequently occurring types in Poland. The soils were rated as the following farming use complexes: very good wheat-growing, good wheat-growing, very good rye-growing, good rye-growing, poor rye-growing, very poor rye growing. Two buckwheat forms were investigated: diploid - cv. Kora and tetraploid - cv. Emka. The results of two years study showed significant influence of soil conditions on buckwheat yield. The smallest yields were obtained on the soils of poor and very poor rye complexes. On the soil of poor wheat complex the smallest yield variation between years was stated. Low yield of buckwheat on poor soils was related to unprofitable changes of canopy architecture (decrease of both plant height and number of branches per plant) and yield components (smaller weight of 1000 fruits, fruit weight per plant, number of fruits per plant. Yield of Emka variety was smaller than Kora's due to smaller number and weight of fruits per plant.