An-Najah Staff

Oat (Avena sativa L.) is a cereal widely grown as a spring crop throughout the temperate zones, beingparticularly adapted to areas with cool and wet summers such as Northwest Europe and Canada. There isscope for further oat expansion in Mediterranean Basin where the crop will face hot and dry weather. Inthis work, we assessed adaptation of 32 modern oat cultivars from different origin and usage to autumnsowings under Mediterranean agroecological conditions. Experiments were carried out over four cropseasons at 6 contrasting locations along Mediterranean Basin, including Spain, Tunisia, Egypt and Pales-tinian Territories. ANOVA analysis revealed genotype × environment interactions. For test environmentand genotype evaluation heritability-adjusted genotype plus genotype × environment (HA-GGE), biplotanalysis was performed. Biplot analysis differentiate two mega-environments one comprising the loca-tions of Egypt and Palestinian Territories and another including Spain and Tunisia. Pearson’s correlationand HA-biplots confirmed overall a positive correlation between yield and HI, and a negative correlationbetween yield and rust and flowering date. For other traits, relations among the traits differed dependingon the ME evaluated. The study allowed determining within each ME the best discriminative location,representative of the target environment and repeatable across year and the genotypes with superiorand stable characteristic for breeding of adapted oats.