Elements of yield structure and their correlation relationships in populations of winter wheat (Triticum aestivum L.)

In 2022–2024, in the experimental field of the educational and production center of Bila Tserkva National University soft winter wheat populations of the second-fourth generation were studied, created by hybridization of the Western European ecotype with the forest-steppe ecotype: «Varvik»/«Tsarivna», «Varvik»/«Lybid», «Bohemia»/«Lybid», «Vebster»/«Tsarivna»; forest-steppe ecotype with forest-steppe: «Kolos Myronivshchyny»/«Tsarivna», «Myrlena»/«Tsarivna», «Myrlena»/«Lybid»; steppe ecotype with forest-steppe: «Drіadа 1»/«Perlyna lisostepu», «Sluzhnytsia odeska»/«Tsarivna», «Sluzhnytsia odeska»/«Lybid». The aim of research was to study the formation of productivity elements in hybrid soft winter wheat populations and determine the correlation relationships between them. Correlations of varying strengths and directions between the productivity elements in the studied populations were found. In F2 , a direct strong interdependence (r = 0.745) was established between the number of grains in the main spike and their mass, a significant (r = 0.666) – the mass of grains from an ear with a mass of 1000 grains, (r = 0.643) – the number of spikelet’s and the number of grains in the ear. A moderate relationship was noted between productive bushiness and the number of grains from the ear – r = 0.439 and their mass – r = 0.470, the length of the main spike with a mass of 1000 grains – 0.445. In F3 , a strong direct correlation was found between the number of grains in the ear and their mass (r = 0.848) and a significant (r = 0.642) mass of grain in the ear with a mass of 1000 grains. A moderate correlation was found between the length of the main ear and the number of spikelet’s in the ear – r = 0.403, the number of spikelet’s with the mass of grain (r = 0.425) and the mass of 1000 grains in the ear – r = 0.478. A strong direct correlation was found in the F4 populations between the number of grains in the ear and their mass – r = 0.887 and the mass of grain in the ear with the mass of 1000 grains in the ear – r = 0.794. A moderate direct correlation was determined between the number of spikelet’s in the ear with the number of grains in the ear (r = 0.477) and their mass (r = 0.403) and the length of the ear and the number of grains in the ear with the mass of 1000 grains (r = 0.300; r = 0.426, respectively). In populations F2-4, a direct strong correlation relationship (r = 0.745–0.887) was determined between the number of grains in the main ear and the mass of grain in the ear and a significant and strong correlation relationship (r = 0.666 – F2 ; r = 0.642 – F3 ; r = 0.794 – F4 ) between the mass of grain in the ear with the mass of 1000 grains in the ear, that increases the efficiency of selection and contributes to isolation of breeding valuable recombinants. Key words: soft winter wheat, productive bushiness, ear length, number of ears, number of grains, grain weight, weight of 1000 grains, correlation interdependence.