PHENOTYPIC STABILITY OF OATS MEASURED WITH DIFFERENT STABILITY ANALYSES

The phenotypic stability of seven Finnish and Nordic oat cultivars and 12 breeding lines developed at the Hankkija Plant Breeding Institute, Finland, was studied using the Finlay-Wilkinson regression method, Eb erhart-Russell stability analysis, principal component analysis (PCA) with biplot presentation, canonical variate analysis (CVA) and Procrus tes analysis. Comparison of stability analyses was based on four dissi milar growing seasons. In addition to the measurement of phenotypic st ability of grain yield, the performance of 12 morpho-physiological tra its was evaluated, including maturity class and structure of canopy an d plant stand. The different stability analyses examined produced unif orm results and ranked the cultivars and breeding lines without major disagreements. Lines with exceptionally stable yield performance over the different growing seasons were identified. In general, there was a n association of high yielding ability with poor stability. However, s ome cultivars deviated from this tendency and showed high grain yield production and average stability of yield performance.