MEDITERRANEAN LANDRACES OF DURUM WHEAT PRESERVED IN THE VAVILOV COLLECTION (VIR)
Background. Landraces constitute a valuable pool for use in breeding. Even today, the collection of VIR contains this unique material, which has not been reproduced in the places of its origin for a long time, and for the most part does not occur in any collection of the world. About 60% of the landraces of the VIR durum wheat collection were collected in the countries of the Mediterranean basin where durum wheat is one of the leading cereals. Complex comparative study of this material according to its morphological and agrobiological traits makes it possible to identify valuable landraces and recommend them for the use in various studies. Objective. The research covered 313 landraces of durum wheat from 20 countries and regions of the Mediterranean basin preserved in the collection of VIR. The experiment was conducted in the fields of the Tel Hadiya Research Station of the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA, Syria). Results and conclusion. As a result of the evaluation of economically useful traits, sources of earliness, short-stem characteristics, and productivity components were identified. The field assessment of resistance to the blotch of wheat (<i>Septoria nodorum</i> Belk.), wheat yellow rust (<i>Puccinia striiformis</i> West.) and wheat leaf rust (<i>Puccinia recondita</i> Rob. ex Desm. f. sp. <i>tritici</i> Erikss.) showed differences in the resistance to these diseases among landraces of different origin. Immunity to yellow rust was observed in the varieties from Algeria, Spain, Italy and Syria, to brown rust in the varieties from North Africa and Portugal, and to blotch in the varieties from Italy and Portugal. The studied durum wheat landraces possess valuable morphological characteristics. Identification of the <i>Triticum durum</i> Desf. accessions revealed new varieties and forms. An analysis of the results of the comparative study of the Mediterranean landraces manifested great diversity of their morphological characteristics and undoubted value of individual varieties possessing various important economic traits. O