Determination of agricultural characteristics of safflower (Carthamus tinctorius L.) genotypes under Ankara ecological conditions

This study was carried out at the Research and implementation area of the Central Research Institute of Field Crops, in the cropping season of 2014. The objective of this study was to determine the summer field performance of introduction material from various countries and National gene bank of USA (USDA) and to determine candiadte variety from these introduction material. The field experiment was conducted according Augmented design with 30 introduction material from 3 domestic safflower varieties (Remzibey, Dinçer, Balcı) obtained from Eskişehir Transitional Zone Agricultural Research İnstitute. Morphological data on different traits such as number of days to bolting, number of days to flowering, number of days to head maturity, plant height, number of branches, number of heads per plant, diameter of head, number of seed per head, hull rate, 1000 seed weight, seed yield, crude oil ratio, fatty acid composition and crude protein ratio was recorded. According to the results of this study, there was high variation among accessions for number of days to bolting (22-49 day), number of days to flowering (83-106 day), number of days to head maturity (154-180 day), plant height (47.9-108.3 cm), number of branches (4-9 number/plant), number of heads per plant (9-27 number/plant), diameter of head (1.1-2.9 cm), number of seed per heads (5-92 number/head), 1000 seed weight (27,6-78,6g), seed yield (78.4-343.1 kg/da), crude oil ratio (19-38%), Linoleic fatty acid composition (11.1-80.52%) and crude protein ratio (11.3-18.5%). Considering the investigated traits, some promising introduction materials when compared to check varieties, will be subject to the regional yield trials.