The wheat breeding in Mongolia

Abstract

The main feature of Mongolia’s climate is extreme continental nature. According to the soil, climate condition and farming system Mongolia is divided into 5 distinct crop production zones. The short growing season, low precipitation and high evaporation are the over-riding constraints in Mongolian agriculture. Particularly, unseasonable frosts and severe drought can cause harvest losses of 10 to 30 % of crops. Spring wheat is the dominant staple food crop, which is cultivated on about 90% of agricultural land in Mongolia. Systematic crop breeding started in the 1960s in Mongolia and cereal crop breeding have been developed through 5 steps. Wheat breeding objective mainly focused on the improvement of high grain yield, early maturity, drought tolerance, disease resistance, high quality and nutritional value, irrigation and duruim wheat. During 60 years of study over 110 cereals crop varieties have been developed. The recently released and commercialized new spring varieties Darkhan 144, Darkhan 131, Darkhan 160, Darkhan 193, Darkhan 212, Darkhan 172 have got average grain yield 2.0-3.5 t/ha and comprises about 40% of total sowing area in the county over past years. In the future, the major target of spring wheat breeding programs in Mongolia will focus on the crop yield potential, quality and, in particular, the improvement of drought and heat tolerance which have obvious negative effects to crop potential in recent years.