The determination of safflower’s leaf area with morphometric method

Abstract

The aim and tasks of the study. To identify potential index of safflower’s leaf area, the possibility of assessing this index with using the sixth leaf area and select samples with contrasting leaf area indices.

Materials and methods. The objects of the study were breeding safflower’s samples from breeding of Institute of oilseeds crops NAAS of Ukraine. Researches were conducted in scientific rotation of Institute of oilseeds crops in 2014-2015.

The length and width of safflower’s leaf surface and leaf asymmetry parameter were measured at sixth leaf to five leaves from areas in the first case, and all the leaves of plants in the second case. The lengths of the leaf surface were measured from the base of the leaf to its top, width – at the widest part of the leaf. Leaf asymmetry parameter is the distance from the top of the leaf to its widest part. All measurements were performed with millimeter precision.

Results and discussion. There were observed high variability on the feature of leaf area among the samples. The width of the leaf samples which studied five leaves of plants varied in the range of 3.2 to 5.7 cm, length of leaf – 7,3-12,6 cm, asymmetry index leaf – 3,3-6,7 cm, leaf area – 12,34-36,65 cm and the number of branches had changed within 6,2-11,0 items. For summary results of the studied parameters the highly productive samples were K.V., D 2 yellow-orange spiny, Sample 16 carved(spiny) and D 20 white flower yellow stigmas, and the underproductive – D 13 orange spiny, D 13 orange-red, 149/3 № 3 А and 149/3 № 3 B.

A significant positive correlation was observed among the total leaf area on the plant and other factors such as: the leaf area at the central branch (0.91), the number of branches (0.90) and leaf area of one leaf (0.88). It indicates that these three parameters are essential and important in determine the leaf area and on them should pay priority attention to the study of this option.

Conclusions. It was found that important in determine the leaf area were three indicators – leaf area on the main branch, the number of branches and leaf area of a leaf. Samples with bigger leaf area of sixth leaf have a large leaf area in case of measurement on the whole plant leaves. There were installed significant positive correlation among the number of branches and number of leaves (0.95), the number of branches and a total leaf area per plant (0.90), number of leaves and total leaf area per plant (0.78).

It were identified the largest – from 26.67 cm² to 36.65 cm² (K.V., D 2 yellow-orange spiny, Sample 16 carved (spiny), D 1 yellow spiny, and the lowest – D 13 orange spiny, D 13 orange-red, 149/3 № 3 A and 149/3 № 3 B (12,34–14,56 cm²) leaf area