Comparison of Evaluation Methods for High Yield and Stability of the New Barley Strains

The high-yield and stability of the new barley strains in the regional trials were analyzed by coefficient of variation method, high and stable coefficient (HSC) method and AMMI model in Dali during 2011-2013. The results indicated that all these methods could provide reference for selecting new barley strains with high and stable yield, but each method still had some limitations. The method of coefficient of variation combined with average yield was simple, intuitive and easy to understand and focused on revealing yield stability, but difficult to ensure reliability and reflect the interactions between the genes and environment. High stability coefficient method focused on reflecting yield ability and more practical, but its instability was easily covered by high yield. AMMI model analysis not only effectively revealed the influence of three factors (environment, genes and interaction of genes and environment) on barley strains, and the analysis process was rigorous and the result had high reliability, but also was very sufficient for the classification of yield potential and stability, so could be preferentially chosen to evaluate high and stable yield of new barley strains in the regional experiment. Based on the analysis results by three methods, we found that strains 052DM3-8-8 and 071DM11-7 had high and stable yield;052DM3-3, 071DM11-4 and Feng03-39 had high and unstable yield;S500, Feng03-9, 071DM16-1, and 071DM16-4 had low and stable yield or low and unstable yield;and the 052DM3-8-8 had the highest yield among them, with suitable stability parameters and high production potential.