About sunflower breeding in the Tambov research institute of agriculture

In the Tambov region located on 52° N late maturing highly productive sunflower varieties and hybrids don't ripen. For agricultural production of in the region there are necessary early and very early varieties providing stable seed yield in years without desiccation before harvesting. Breeding works on development of new sunflower varieties has been conducting in the Tambov scientific research institute of agriculture from the middle 50th of last century. The main objective is studying of the genetic resources of sunflower for the purpose to identify sources and donors of high productivity, technological effectiveness, very early maturing, and resistance to stress factors, with good qualitative traits. The compound intervarietal populations are developed by repeated repollination of specially selected varieties. To increase a level of heterozygosity, the varieties differed by environmental and genetic origin are included into the population. For years of researches on sunflower breeding (1954-2015) 18 varieties have been developed, five of them and a hybrid are included into the State register of the breeding achievements of the Russian Federation, and a unique innovative variety PK-05 has very large seeds and meets the market requirements for seed sizes. The new innovative highly productive sunflower variety Chakinsky 100 bred at the institute was tested on the State variety testing plots of the Russian Federation in 2016.