Morphological traits of seeds of armenian type of cultivated sunflower var. Armeniacus Wenzl. Et Anashez

The Armenian population of sunflower is very peculiar on its morphological traits, differed from the all other known types of cultivated sunflower. The last expedition for collection of the samples of this population was organized in late 60-ties of the previous century. Those years, plants of the north-Russian and middle-Russian types of sunflower were involved in breeding process. But it had come almost 50 years after mentioned events. In this period a new promising direction - development of confectionary sunflower varieties has appeared. So it is very interested to undertake such expedition to Armenia again, to find, collect and then study morphological traits of seeds in order to use them in breeding of modern confectionary varieties and hybrids of sunflower. It appeared hard to find and collect the seeds of such type in modern Armenia as the sunflower is low cultivated here, nevertheless, we founded out the samples in some gardens in a settlement Mets Sariar. Collected in 2013-2014 samples were found to be a mixture of seeds on morphological traits (size, form, color, etc.). During the examination all seeds on their external traits were differentiated accurately on seven different types (I-VII), further each type was studied separately. The analyzed types appeared to be armorless eatable forms. Huskness of the different seeds types varied from 30.4 (VII type) to 55.6% (IV type). Some of them, because of thick and rough husk, did not affected by a moth. After characterizing the external seeds traits, each allocated type of seeds had its own original name. For example, the first type due to the original high-stretch form of seeds was named “Plumelet”. Thus, the name of each type emphasized the external form and the color of seeds. Due to measured traits of seeds (such as length, width, thickness, etc.) the studied types differed significantly. The further studying allowed to separate new “subtypes” in samples of each type due to new displayed seed traits. The most subtypes were allocated inside the third and seventh seed types. Collected types of seeds on their sizes, forms, color, streakiness, etc. showed that they are differed with higher variation of the traits and are similar to the common cultivated sunflower. The Armenian sunflower type can be used widely as absolutely new initial seeds in breeding of sunflower for edible, confectionary and oil purposes.