Evaluation of Wild Annual Sunflower Species for Some Morphological, Phenological, and Agronomic Characters under Field Conditions*

New gene sources are needed for adaptation to climatic changes, resistance to the regeneration of diseases and pests, and achieving high heterosis in sunflower breeding. Wild species are the most important gene sources for sunflower breeding studies. For breeding studies, it is necessary to know the morphological, Phenological, and agronomic characteristics of these genotypes in field conditions. The aim of this research was to determine these components of annual wild sunflower (Helianthus) species under field conditions in the 2012 and 2013 growing seasons for new gene sources. In this research, H. agrestis, H. annuus (4 different genotypes), H. anomalus, H. argophyllus, H. bolanderi, H. debilis (ssp. debilis, ssp. cucumerifolius, ssp. silvestris, ssp. tardiflorus and ssp. vestitus subspecies), H. deserticola, H. exilis, H. neglectus, H. niveus (ssp. niveus, ssp. canescens and ssp. tephrodes subspecies) H. petiolaris (ssp. petiolaris (2 different genotypes) and ssp. fallax subspecies), H. porteri, and H. praecox (ssp. praecox (2 different genotypes), ssp. hirtus, and ssp. runyani subspecies) were used as material. In this study, determined characters on annual wild sunflower genotypes were plant height, primary branches number, secondary branches number per primary branches, plant spreading diameter, the number of days from planting to first flowering, the number of days from planting to 50 % flowering, the number of days from planting to the end of flowering, the number of days of the flowering period, main stem diameter, head diameter, 1000 seeds weight, and seed yield. Year factor had a significant effect on these characters except plant height. Genotype had a significant effect on all characters in both years except seed width in 2013. In both years, the highest values for seed yield, 100 seed weight, head diameter, and main stem diameter were obtained in wild H. annuus genotypes while H. argophyllus had the highest values for plant height and primary branches number, and the highest days numbers from planting to first and 50% flowering. In the first and second growing seasons; values of the genotypes changed between 61.33 and 325.67 cm for plant height, between 0.73 and 101.20 g for thousand seed weight, between 97 and 223 days for the time from planting to 50% flowering, between 50 and 171 days for the flowering period, between 5.0 and 800.70 units for the number of plant heads, between 1.57 and 233.20 g for plant grain yields.