A proper understanding of cultivar adaptation to different environments is of great relevance in agronomy and plant breeding. As wheat is the most important crop in Poland, with a total of about 22% of the total sown area, the study of its performance in environments with different productivity levels for consequent cultivar recommendation is of major importance. In this paper, we assess the relative performance of winter wheat cultivars in environments with different productivity and propose a method for cultivar recommendation, by considering the information of environmental conditions and drought stress. This is performed in the following steps: (1) calculation of expected wheat productivity, depending on environmental factors, (2) calculation of relative productivity of cultivars in the environments, and (3) recommendation of cultivars of a specific type and range of adaptation. Soil and weather conditions were confirmed as the most important factors affecting winter wheat yield. The weather factors should be considered rather in shorter (e.g., 10 day) than longer (e.g., 60 day) time periods and in relation to growth stages. The ANCOVA model with genotype and management intensity as fixed factors, and soil and weather parameters as covariates was proposed to assess the expected wheat productivity in particular environments and the expected performance of each genotype (cultivar). The recommendation of cultivars for locations of specified productivity was proposed based on the difference between the expected cultivar yield and the mean wheat productivity, and compared with the Polish official cultivar recommendation list.

The response of some photosynthetic parameters (CO2 assimilation, transpiration rate, stomatal conductance, intercellular CO2 concentration, water-use efficiency, and chlorophyll content), shoot development, and the morphological features of t...

Traditional husbandry fostered rich semi-open oakwood communities composed of forest and non-forest species. In the eastern Carpathian region, silvo-pastoralism was commonplace by the mid-1900s. This study aimed to determine the state of the preservation of the ecotonal character of grassland-woodland interfaces in formerly pastured cultural landscapes of SE-Polish Carpathian foothills and W-Ukrainian Ciscarpathia in the context of land-use change. In the first region, despite the long-lasting history of forest grazing amongst mainly arable land, the post-WWII collapse of husbandry and the imposed ban on forest grazing, has led to swift development of dense undergrowth and establishment of impermeable ecological woodland-open habitat barrier. As a result, former silvo-pastoral oakwoods developed the features of the Tilio-Carpinentum forest community although some forest species have not yet moved in due to their poor dispersibility. The much younger oakwoods in the Ukrainian study region are remnants of the sparsely treed grasslands, some of which had been ploughed in the mid 20th century. Their semi-open canopy structure, maintained through repetitive grass burning, contributes to the communities ecotonal character, but without regular livestock-led plant “spill-over” from the grassland, the oakwoods remain species-poor. The restoration of species-rich semi-open oak woods requires “unsealing” the forest-grassland interface, reducing the degree of canopy closure, and opening that zone up to extensive grazing—an important seed dispersal vector.