Abstract
In order to study the reaction of autoteraploid rye (Secale cereale L., 2n=4x=28) to different environmental conditions, an experiment was carried out at Kyoto, Takatsuki and Grunbach. As experimental materials, a commercial tetra-rye cv. 'Tero' and four tetraploid rye populations derived from the progeny of a hybrid Secale cereale L. cv. 'Heines Hellkorn'×S, vavilovii Grossh. were used. The results of cytological examination of the materials grown at Takatsuki indicated that differences between the populations with regard to the frequency of aneuploid plants and the variation of chromosome pairing at MI were only slight and should not be important criteria for the productivity of these materials. A comparison of agronomic performance of these populations in Germany and Japan revealed highly significant differences between locations. On the contrary, no significant defferences were found between populations, which reacted differentially to the environments, i.e. they showed different levels of adaptability. Estimations of stability parameters indicated that the four selected populations performed more stably than the check cv. 'Tero'. Although the latter showed a higher average performance over all locations, the materials selected from progeny of the hybrid Secale cereale×S. vavilovii seem to offer better possibilities for further improvement of tetrarye performance over a wide range of environments.
