New Zealand Journal of Agricultural Research abstracts
Secale montanum --a wider role in Australasia?
R. N. ORAM
CSIRO Division of Plant Industry
GPO Box 1600, Canberra
ACT 2601, Australia
Abstract The accession CPI 22755 of Secale montanum
Guss. (secale) from Kotor, Montenegro, and the non-shattering cultivar Black
Mountain bred from it, have proven to be useful as self-regenerating,
short-lived perennial grasses in permanent, montane pastures on free-draining
acid soils in one region of Victoria, and show promise in other parts of
Australia and in New Zealand. The species is widely distributed in southern
Europe, northern Africa, and south-western Asia, where it is well adapted to
dry, stony, or rocky hillsides. Very little germplasm has been introduced into
Australia, but the variability in the Montenegro population has been augmented
by somaclonal variation. Selection over eight generations at Canberra for
higher seed set, shorter awns, better establishment from seed, and higher
survival over summer on duplex soils has produced a population which can
persist under occasional crash grazing and annual seed harvesting, even through
a year in which the winter and spring were very dry. This type has shown
promise in trials conducted by Mrs K. Flower on deep sands in the south east of
South Australia and by Ms C. Saunders on sandy duplex soils in south-western
Australia. Further possible developments in the species are discussed.
Keywords Secale montanum; secale; mountain rye;
breeding; acid soils
New Zealand Journal of Agricultural Research, 1996, Vol. 39: 629-633
0028-8233/96/3904-0629 $2.50/0 (c) The Royal Society of New Zealand
1996
PDF file of entire paper: medium quality (455K); (scanned from paper original: notes about this process)
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