The cropping season of 1996 for winter barley drastically differed from normal, especially in spring and summer. As for winter, frosts were moderate and in breeding nurseries only low cold tolerant lines were killed or partly damaged. New material, including crosses with spring barley and some germplasm from Europe and Middle Asia, carrying genes for very vigorous growth and resistance to loose smut, developed huge aboveground biomass and were damaged because of snow mold and frosts. But all released varieties Skorohod, Bastion, Vavilon and promising Kozir and Secret completely survived. An excellent differentiation on winterhardiness was obtained on the North - Kuban Experimental Station situated 160 km to the North from Krasnodar. Among 2200 lines, tested on concrete beds, 50% were killed completely, 30% - survived on 20 - 50% and only 10% - survived on 50 - 70%, and 10% - survived on 70 - 100%. The check variety Kozir had 30 - 40% alive plants, the more cold tolerant Bastion 60 -70%. The real discovery of this season was identification of 3 two-rowed lines that survived on 70 - 80%.
 

The spring and summer period was very atypical for the North Caucasus due to rather high temperatures in May - July, starting from heading date, absence of rains during 3 months and severe spreading of leaf rust, which had an epiphytotic character. Nevertheless, winter barley yield was rather high in the advanced trials, from 5 to 9 t/ha due to good moisture soil reserves. Average yield on farmer fields from 300 000 ha attained 3.7 t/ha, that's 200 kg/ha more than the last season, but 1000 kg/ha less than it was before the perestroyka.

In the recent economical situation, when levels of soil fertility dropped considerably, application of fertilizers and other chemicals for a plant protection decreased, and technological discipline ruined, it was determined that new approaches are needed in the breeding strategy to meet demand of new farms belonging to different forms of land ownership. Naturally, parameters of cultivated varieties for the yield level of 3 - 4 t/ha and 7 - 8 t/ha will differ drastically. Dwarfs and semi-dwarfs are not in great demand now. We need more tall-strawed material with high vigor of initial growth. A breeding program on disease resistance is becoming more urgent than before because of high prices for fungicides and a sharpness of ecological problems. It's relevant to notice that the evident shift in priorities among pathogens can be seen. For the previous 5 year period, net blotch (Drechlera teres) was economically the most important barley disease. This season, barley crown rust (Puccinia hordei) was dominant. About 80% of winter barley lines were affected with severities of 70 - 90%. Among released varieties, a high resistance to leaf rust was recorded on a facultative mutant barley Secret, a new promising Advance and their

derivatives. They were affected 10 - 15% in comparison with checks Kozir and Vavilon - 70 - 80%.

It seems rather strange, but between resistance and grain yield there was not a strong correlation. A newly released variety Kozir, which turned out to be rather susceptible to leaf rust, outyielded all other varieties including ones very resistant. The same phenomenon was observed in winter wheat trials, where some varieties severely affected by yellow rust produced higher grain yield than resistant ones. Some physiologists attribute all of this to the different attractive capacity of heads, others conclude that "stem reserves offer a powerful resource for grain filling under any type of stress that inhibits current assimilation" (Blum, 1996). Anyway, breeders have to take into consideration these facts and pay more attention to disease tolerance than disease resistance.

If our old approach in barley improvement concentrated around the yield potential with the accent on the plant architecture, the new trend focuses all our efforts on adaptation. The combination of winterhardiness with high rate of initial growth, tolerance to pathogens, and resistance to lodging are subject to hard selection pressure. New material in advanced trials gives an optimism for the success in this direction (Table 1).

Line 92M1 is excellent concerning resistance to rust, good growth vigor, high yield in low and moderate soil fertility and needs only cold tolerance improvement. Another promising line K-354 with high winterhardiness needs a bit of improvement in increasing of the disease tolerance.

Table 1. Performance of winter barley in advanced trials. Krasnodar, 1996.

Variety	Winter? hardiness, score	Growth rate,  score	Rust  resist., score	Yield, kg/ha?
				HSF	MSF	NKES
Vavilon	3	7	4	7960	5540	6370
Bastion	7	5	4	7830	5240	5450
Kozir	4	6	2	8870	5940	6500
Secret	4	6	7	8660	5670	5470
Advance	5	6	8	8920	6390	5640
Kredit	3	6	2	9040	6170	6510
K-354	9	7	5	8390	6030	6310
95M1	3	9	8	7680	5210	6910
92M1	3	9	8	7570	6240	7420
LSD 0.05			150	420	380	400

?1 - very low winter hardiness or disease resistance, 5 - moderate, 9 - very high.
?NSF - high soil fertility,
MSF - moderate soil fertility,
NKES - North - Kuban Exp. Station.

Reference

Blum A. 1996. The role of mobilized stem reserves in stress tolerance. In: Proceedings of

VII IBGS. Saskatoon, Canada. vol. III. p. 267-275.