The goal of our research was to form a collection of groats barley, to search, to select and to evaluate starting material of spring barley for a set of valuable economic traits, technological properties and culinary qualities of barley groats.
Results and Discussion. Basing on to the results of assessments, we identified selected 55 spring barley accessions, which were characterized by 17 traits and 75 expression levels. The collection includes accessions from 11 countries; the largest number of accessions (59) are from Ukraine; 39 – from Russia; 10 - from Belarus; 10 - from Germany; 6 - from France; 5 - from Kazakhstan; 4 - from Canada; 3 - from the Czech Republic; 2 – from Great Britain; 1 accesson is from Serbia; and 1 - from Austria. Accessions combining high levels of expression of different traits are the most valuable. They include the following accessions: Doridnyi, Vodohrai, Sviatomykhailivskyi, Svarozhych, Soka, Іlot (UKR). Naked accessions include: Akhilles (UKR), Mayskiy, Oskar, Golozyornyy 1, Omskiy Golozyornyy 1 (RUS), CDC Alamo, CDC Candle (CAN). These varieties can be starting material for creation of new modern high-performance spring groats barley varieties. Ten valuable accessions registered with the NCPGRU (Sovіra, Doridnyi, Soka, Vodohrai, Partner, Yukatan, Avhii, Svarozhych, Baskak, and Virtuoz) were included in the trait groats collection.
Conclusions. Basing on the results of multiyear studies, we formed the trait collection of spring groats barley comprising 140 accessions from 11 countries. The collection includes 55 reference accessions that cover 17 traits (plant height, vegetation period, ear length, grain weight per ear, 1000-grain weight, grain shape, grain evenness, vitreousness, culinary qualities of barley groats, etc.) characterized by 75 levels of their expression. The collection is of considerable value for science and education. The accessions selected allow improving the efficiency of breeding to create new varieties with high technological and culinary properties as well as with a set of valuable economic characteristics.