title: Morpho-physiolological and qualitative traits of a bread wheat collection spanning a century of breeding in Italy.
abstract: Evaluation and characterization are crucial steps in the exploitation of germplasm collections. The Sant'Angelo Lodigiano unit of the Consiglio per la ricerca in agricoltura e l'analisi dell'economia agraria (CREA) maintains a broad collection of Triticum spp, including more than 4000 genotypes of T. aestivum. Such collection represents a wide source of genetic variability for many agronomic and qualitative traits, extremely useful in modern breeding programs. The collection size, however, makes very difficult its management as a whole. A reduced subset, representing the process of wheat breeding in Italy during the last hundred years, was hence identified for an in-depth characterization. The lines were cropped in two locations over two growing seasons, and analyzed using 16 morpho-agronomic and qualitative descriptors. Most of the analysed characters showed a broad variation throughout the collection, allowing to follow the plant ideotype changes across the breeding progress in Italy during the 20th century.
authors.affiliation: Consiglio per la ricerca in agricoltura e l'analisi dell'economia agraria, Unità di ricerca per la Selezione dei Cereali e la Valorizzazione delle varietà vegetali (CREA-SCV), Sant'Angelo Lodigiano, Italy.
authors.forename: Paolo
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Laino
authors.affiliation: Consiglio per la ricerca in agricoltura e l'analisi dell'economia agraria, Unità di ricerca per la Selezione dei Cereali e la Valorizzazione delle varietà vegetali (CREA-SCV), Sant'Angelo Lodigiano, Italy.
authors.forename: Margherita
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Limonta
authors.affiliation: Consiglio per la ricerca in agricoltura e l'analisi dell'economia agraria, Unità di ricerca per la Selezione dei Cereali e la Valorizzazione delle varietà vegetali (CREA-SCV), Sant'Angelo Lodigiano, Italy.
authors.forename: Davide
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Gerna
authors.affiliation: Consiglio per la ricerca in agricoltura e l'analisi dell'economia agraria, Unità di ricerca per la Selezione dei Cereali e la Valorizzazione delle varietà vegetali (CREA-SCV), Sant'Angelo Lodigiano, Italy.
authors.forename: Patrizia
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Vaccino
keywords: Italy; Triticum aestivum; genetic resources; phenotyping; wheat breeding