Field methods of assessing winter hardiness in peas

Summary

Difficulties encountered in the field selection of winter-hardy pea breeding lines from October sowings at Wellesbourne are reported. Two methods are proposed to enable effective field selection to be accomplished.

• 1. Assessment of damage on surviving plants in the spring, using this as a measure of winter hardiness.

• 2. Early sowing of the breeding lines, leading to much greater winter kill, thus enabling effective selection to be practised on the basis of differences in survival.

Both methods were applied to the same range of control varieties and breeding lines, and gave similar rankings of this material for winter hardiness.