GrainGenes

II. 25. Effect of clipped seeds on growth and yield of a wide range of barley cultivars.

M.A. Khalifa, M.A. El-Morshidy and E.A. Hassaballa, Department of Agronomy and Plant Breeding, University of Assuit, Assiut, Egypt, A.R.E.

The production of the F1 hybrid in the barley crop involved the removal of the upper portion of the palea and awn, this is referred to as clipping. This clipping often resulted in shrivelled, nonplump, and small seeds. The effect of seed size on germination, growth and yield has been widely investigated. It is generally held that larger seeds lead to high germination, vigorous growth and ultimately high yield (Erickson, 1946, Harper and Obeid, 1967). Quisenberry (1926) concluded that correlations between seed weight and grain yield were too low for seed weight to be an important factor in grain yield. Similarly, Bonnet and Woodwarth (1931), Bremner et al. (1963) and Frey and Huang (1969), demonstrated the importance of embryo size and seed weight on viability, growth, and grain yield. Khalifa (1974) found that clipping in barley resulted in shrivelled grain and small endosperm, hence the clipped kernel failed to germinate as well as unclipped ones.

The results reported here demonstrate the effect of clipping grains of a wide range of barley cultivars (Table 1) on some plant characteristics. Three years of experimentation had been conducted at Assuit University Exp. Farm to compare the effect of clipped and unclipped treatments on growth, yield and some other plant characteristics of barley plants.

Table 1. List of the barley cultivars used.

The statistical analyses showed that clipping had a highly significant effect on the characters studied. In this context it was interesting to note that the expression of date of ear emergence, plant height, weight, yield per plant and yield components of the plants grown from clipped seeds were significantly different from those sown with normal or unclipped seeds (Table 2).

Table 2. Summary of the combined averages as affected by clipping and unclipping seeds for date of ear emergence, height, plant weight, yield, straw, fertile culms, grains/spike and grain: straw ratio.

It might be concluded, therefore, that in breeding programs, comparisons of the F1 hybrids, F2 populations and their corresponding parental lines should be based on plants grown from the same source of seeds.

References:

Bonnett, O.T. and C.M. Woodwarth. 1931. A yield analysis of three varieties of barley. Amer. Soc. Agron. Jour., 23:311-2327.

Bremner, P.M., R.N. Eckersall and R.K. Scott. 1963. The relative importance of embryo size and endosperm size in causing the effects associated with seed size in wheat. Jour. Agric. Sci., 61:139-145.

Erickson, L.C. 1946. The effect of alfalfa seed size and depth of seeding upon the subsequent procurement on stand. Jour. Amer. Soc. Agron., 38:964-973.

Frey, K.J. and T.F. Huang. 1969. Relation of seed weight to grain yields in oats, Avena sativa L. Euphytica 18:417-424.

Harper, J.L. and M. Obeid. 1967. Influence of seed size and depth of sowing on the establishment and growth of varieties of fiber and oil seed flax. Crop Sci., 7:527-532.

Khalifa, M.A. 1974. Genetic study of yield and its components in spring barley (Hordeum sativum Jess.). Ph.D. Thesis, Univ. of Wales.

Quisenberry, K.S. 1926. Correlated inheritance of quantitative characters and qualitative characters in oats. W. Va. Agric. Exp. Stn. Bull. 202.

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