Phenotypic plasticity and breeding reproductive features in the bioresource collection of the genus Betula L. in the Voronezh region

The article provides theoretical and practical data on the creation, composition and some parameters of productivity and reproduction of a bioresource collection of fast-growing woody plants using the example of the genus Betula L. The height growth of 10-year-old trees grown from seeds of open pollination of silver birch (13 families), downy b. (16 families), silver birch «Dalecarlica» (3 families), B. ermanii (1 family), B. lenta (3 families) was studied. Quantitative signs of the vegetative sphere of trees – height growth and generative – seed germination in different breeding categories of birch trees were revealed. The maximum value (7 m) for this indicator was observed in families C-3, C-4, C-31 and C-51 (highly selfsterile). In B. pubescens, the highest value of 7.1 m was found in the highly self-sterile form B-18. It has been established that for self-sterile forms of both local birch species, a promising breeding direction is the production of seeds and reproduction with a natural method of reproduction. Among those introduced to the Voronezh Region, the Dalecarlian birch is the most promising, in which even the average family height values exceeded the same indicator for local species, and individual trees of all three families were leaders in this respect among all studied species. Other birch species introduced to the Voronezh Region, B. ermanii and B. lenta, showed low values for this feature and are unpromising for the purposes of introduction in the Voronezh region. The germination of seeds of local birch species obtained by different pollination methods has been determined. A tendency to asymmetry in the distribution of germination scores during self-pollination (minimum values) and open pollination (maximum values) in a diploid species (silver birch) and relative symmetry in a tetraploid (polyploid) species (downy birch) was revealed.

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