Sunflower breeding in Tambov Research Institute: history and achievements (70 years of journey)

Sunflower breeding started in the Tambov Research Institute of Agriculture - a branch of the I.V. Michurin Federal Research Center in the 50s of the last century (in those years, the Tambov State Regional Agricultural Experimental Station). There were developed very early and early-maturing sunflower varieties that ripen in the first half of September, and are not inferior by oil yield per a hectare to the best middle maturing varieties of the Russian breeding. Sunflower collections were studied, promising forms for the subsequent stages of the breeding process were identified and a diverse source material was developed. From 1956 to 1966, four new sunflower varieties were bred and submitted for the State variety trial: Chakinsky 269, Avangard, October 50 and Tambovsky very early maturing. The variety Chakinsky 269 was released in the Tambov, Lipetsk and East Kazakhstan regions. The midmaturing variety Avangard was released for seeds in the Altai region in 1973 and for silage in the Tambov region. From 1977 to 1984, new highly productive sunflower varieties Trudovik, Signal, Flight, and Rzhaksinsky were developed, they are widely distributed in the Tambov region and beyond. From 1985 to 2001, the very early maturing varieties Chakinsky 602, Chakinsky 787 and the early maturing variety Chakinsky 931 were bred. From 2010 to 2020, four sunflower varieties of various uses: Spartak, Chakinsky 77, PK 05, Chakinsky 100 and one sunflower hybrid Nadezhda were developed together with Agroplasma LLC. In 2021, a new variety of sunflower was submitted to the State variety trial. During the years of testing in the nursery of a competitive variety trial, the weight of 1000 seeds was 75.4 g, oil content of the seeds - 49.2%, and by oil yield it exceeded the control by 40 kg/ha.