The results of studying the adaptive potential of the walnut

Abiotic stressors cause significant economic damage to horticulture and are one of the main causes that negatively affect the productivity of crops. Along with social and economic problems, the efficiency of industrial fruit growing in the Russian Federation depends to a large extent on the low adaptive potential of cultivated cultivars. Without the creation of new integrated systems that increase the production of domestic fruit products, it is difficult to solve the task of replacing fruit imports. In such conditions, the use of the most effective methods for evaluation the genetic potential of the initial forms and hybrid material will allow to increase the productivity of the selection process and to obtain the new generation of highly productive and adaptively resistant cultivars of walnut. In the course of the research, 27 walnut cultivars from the gene fund collection in the Nikita Botanical Gardens were compared in 10 main economic characteristics with the developed ideal model of the cultivar: the period of entry into fruiting (4 years), fruit size (3 points), fruit mass (26 g), kernel taste (5 points), kernel output (60%), fat, and protein content (70 and 22%, respectively), productivity (50 kg t‑1), frost resistance (3 points), drought resistance (32 points), heat resistance (3 points). Cluster analysis of the experimental data was carried out using the computer program Statistics 10. The distribution of cultivars in 4 groups was carried out using the calculated integral criteria of all determined indicators that characterize their degree of similarity with the ideal model: I - ‘Sladkoyaderny’, ‘Gurzufsky’, ‘Doliny’, ‘Skabery’, ‘Partizansky’, ‘Yuzhnoberezhny’, ‘Pozdnetsvetushchy’, ‘Arkad’, and ‘Bubenchik’; II - ‘Bospor’, ‘Starokrymsky’, ‘Kacha’, ‘Pioner Kryma’, ‘Originalny’, ‘Zhemchuzhny’, ‘Belbeksky Ranny’, ‘Krymsky Skoroplodny’, and ‘Uigursky’; III - ‘Alminsky’, ‘Burlyuk’, ‘Konkursny’, and ‘Pamyaty Pasenkova’; IV - ‘Moldovskaya Bomba’, ‘Karlik 3’, ‘Podarok Valentiny’, ‘Bomba Chkalovskaya’, and ‘Purpurovy’. The following cultivars proved to be the closest to the model of the cultivar (18 units): ‘Karlik 3’ (16 units), ‘Purpurovy’ (11 units) and ‘Moldavskay Bomba’ (10 units).