Adaptation patterns of winter wheat cultivars in agro-ecological regions

Multi-environment trials are commonly used to assess cultivar adaptation patterns under different environmental conditions and to help make effective cultivar recommendations for growers. An example of a multi-environment trial system used for cultivar recommendations is the Polish Post-registration Variety Testing System. A common approach in cultivar recommendations is to evaluate the adaptability of cultivars across, or for, specific trial locations. However, the locations of the trials and the fields where a farmer will grow a crop are hardly ever in the same place. Therefore, it would be better to group the trial locations into regions and give recommendations for the whole region. The aim of this study is to evaluate the grain yield adaptation patterns of 62 modem winter wheat cultivars in six agro-ecological regions of Poland for two crop management intensities over five growing seasons. The analysis of the grain yield data was performed separately for each intensity using single-stage approaches in linear mixed models. We ascertained that winter wheat yield variability was in the main determined by agro-ecological region and their interactions, and to a small extent by the cultivar effect. Cultivars Sailor and Linus were widely adapted to all agro-ecological regions studied for both crop management intensities. It is highly probable that these two cultivars will obtain high yield in all agro-ecological regions as well as with both crop management intensities studied. We observed high compatibility rankings between locations for both crop management intensities. High compatibility of the cultivar rankings in the trial locations also provides high precision when determining regions.