The effectiveness of covered oat selection for resistance to dusty smut

The purpose of the research is to evaluate the effectiveness of the selection of covered oats on an artificial infectious background of U. avenae for resistance to dust smut when creating breeding lines. The studies were conducted in the Kirov region in years with different hydrothermal vegetation conditions: 2023 (НTС – 1.66); 2024 (НTС – 1.10). In terms of resistance to smut, there have been studied 13 lines of covered oats, created by the method of mass selection of forms immune to smut on an artificial infectious background of Ustilago avenae (Jens. Pers.) from the samples of the gene pool of the Federal State Budgetary Institution "Federal Research Center All-Russian Institute of Plant Genetic Resources named after N. V. Vavilov" (VIR). Against the natural background of the pathogen development, there was no damage in the created lines and collection samples, and the level of the trait in the indicator cultivar ‘Medved’ was 0.77 %. Artificial inoculation of seeds revealed practically stable lines (11h10, 14h10, 16h10, 18h10, 20h10, 22h10 – damage up to 2 %), which is significantly lower than the initial forms, as well as immune lines (6h10 and 19h10), with damage to the indicator cultivar of 74.8 %. Among them, the 20h10 line significantly exceeded the standard yield on an infectious background – the ‘Arhan’ cultivar highly resistant to dust smut. There was a significant (at p<0.05) correlation dependence of yields on both backgrounds of the smut infection of the study on the main elements of plant productivity: plant height (r = 0.37...0.50), panicle length (r = 0.47...0.52) and its mass (r = 0.58...0.72), the number of spikelets (r = 0.56...0.65), grain weight from the panicle (r = 0.60...0.72) and from the plant (r = 0.51...0.84). A significant relationship was established (at p<0.05) between the dusty smut damage of oat plants and the mass of the panicle (r = -0.40), the number of spikelets (r = -0.37), the number of grains (r = -0.36), the mass of grain from the panicle (r = -0.37) and from the plant (r = -0.38). When the seeds were infected, a high harmfulness of dusty smut was detected: a decrease in the mass of the panicle by 18.3 %, the number of spikelets by 16.6 %, the number of grains by 18.3 %, the mass of grain from the panicle by 22.0 %, and the mass of grain from the plant by 27.6 %. Thus, there have been created resistant to dust smut (5h10, 6h10, 11h10, 14h10, 16h10, 18h10, 19h10, 20h10 and 22h10) and high-yielding (6 h10 and 20h10) covered oat lines.