Screening And Analysis Of High Nutrient Forage Oats

Oats are one of the best feed crops for livestock because of their strong adaptability,strong tillering power,high biomass and high nutritional value.Therefore,the improvement and breeding of forage oat varieties are of great significance for promoting the development of animal husbandry.In this paper,a total of 82 varieties/genotypes from three populations of Italy(ITAO)and domestically cultivated barley in China(XO)and Israeli wild oats were used as research materials,planting in three environments of Guiyang,Chengdu and Ganzi in 2017.The content of crude protein,total phosphorus,total potassium and soluble sugar in whole oats plant was measured.Meanwhile,the agronomic traits such as plant height,ear length,flag leaf length,flag leaf width,effective tiller number and total number of tillers were determined.The measured agronomic and nutritional traits were analyzed by variance,correlation,network,principal component and clustering.Through the above experiments,the effects of different environments and factors on the nutrient accumulation of forage oats were explored,and the variety/genotypes of higher nutrient content were screened to provide reference for rational utilization of forage oat germplasm resources.The main results are as follows:1.According to the results of analysis of oat cultivar/genotype nutrient composition,it was found that the crude protein content of ITAO-83 and ITAO-84 and the total phosphorus content of ITAO-87 were high in three environments.Meanwhile,the total potassium content of ITAO-86 and ITAO-87 is highest.And XO-1-10,Tg13-OA and ITAO-52 had highest the soluble sugar content.Also,the initial moisture content of ITAO-87 as well as the fresh-dry ratio of Tg11-OA and ITAO-87 were highest.2.With the extension of the growth period,the content of nutrients in the whole oats of the three oat populations showed a gradual decline.There were significant differences in nutrition and agronomic traits among the three oat populations under different conditions.The average nutrient content of the ITAO oats from Italy was the highest,while the average nutrient content of domestic XO cultivated oats population was the lowest.3.Correlation and network analysis of oat nutrition and agronomic traits showed that therewere significant correlation in different degrees between oat nutritional traits and agronomic traits(P < 0.05).Among them,there was a significant negative correlation between fresh-to-dry ratio and total number of tillers and effective tillers.And there was a significant negative correlation between initial moisture and crude protein,total potassium,flag leaf length,flag leaf width,total number of tillers and effective tillers.There was a significant negative correlation between high and ear length and crude protein,total number of tillers and effective tillers.Meanwhile,there was a significant positive correlation between other nutrient and agronomic indicators.4.Based on principal component analysis and two-dimensional sorting results,the distribution of positive and negative correlation values existed in all three populations,and the changes were consistent with the environment.Among them,the distribution of wild oats is the most concentrated,while that of ITAO oats is the most dispersed.Thus,the ITAO is most susceptible to environmental impact and the positive as well as negative values of it vary widely among genotypes.It indicated that different genotypes between XO and wild oat populations were more adaptable,and different genotypes of ITAO oats population were less adaptable.5.Comprehensive scores and cluster analysis showed that oat nutrition and agronomic traits were systematically clustered into three categories in three environments.It was found that ITAO-55,ITAO-88,XO-1-42,XO-1-60 all appeared in the first category in two environments,and all of them showed varieties with high nutrient content,large biomass,abundant dry matter accumulation and strong adaptability could be used as materials for further research on germplasm utilization and cultivation of good varieties of forage oats.