Variability of agronomic traits in sunflower inbred lines

For the production of high-yielding sunflower hybrids, it is necessary to cross inbred lines, the parent components of hybrids, which differ in a number of traits. The aim of this paper was to examine the variability of sunflower inbred line for agronomically important traits and to classify them based on similarities. 110 inbred lines from the collection of the Institute of Field and Vegetable Crops in Novi Sad were used in this paper. Nine important agronomic traits were examined: plant height, head diameter, number of days from germination to flowering, number of days from germination to maturity, seed yield, oil percentage, oleic acid content, 1000 seed mass and hull percentage. Inbred lines showed high variability for tested traits. The largest coefficient of variations was for seed yield (CV = 42.51%), and the smallest was for days from germination to flowering (CV = 8.86%) and days from germination to ripening (CV = 8.27%). Based on the principal components analysis (PCA analysis), inbred lines were grouped by similarity: (I) inbred lines with high seed and oil yields, (II) inbred lines with a short period from germination to flowering and (III) inbred lines with a high percentage shells, for special use. Seed yield and oil percentage as the most important agronomic traits were positively correlated, and they were positively correlated with the largest number of examined trais. The data obtained in this paper will be taken into account when crossing the inbred line in order to create sunflower hybrids.