Object: Regularities in formation, inheritance and variability of valuable economic traits, value of spring barley varieties and lines in terms of yield, nutritional properties, resistance to bio- and abiotic factors, modeling and creation of spring food barley starting material and varieties and peculiarities of their breeding. Objective: Determination of theoretical principles of the breeding process of spring food barley varieties, justification and prediction of breeding effects based on determination of variability peculiarities of quantitative traits, their inheritance patterns, establishment of levels and regularities of food parameters expression and efficiency of food variety development. Methods: Field, breeding, biometrical and measuring-weighing; specific for corresponding purposes (biochemical, genetical, statistical). Novelty: The basics of spring food barley breeding were rationalized by complex application of breeding and genetic methods of research. The work differs from the previously known results by discovering valuable nutritional properties of the material under investigation, selecting sources of these properties and improving the food barley breeding process. The features and regularities of the antioxidant activity (AOA) depending on the growing conditions and genotypes were determined. Sources of protein that is highly digestible by proteolytic enzymes were identified. The model of a spring food barley variety for the conditions of the Forest-Steppe of Ukraine was theoretically substantiated. Specific features of spring barley chaffy and naked accessions with wild type and waxy starch were described. Results: The spring barley breeding design was improved, with due account for the nutritional properties of starting components for hybridization and selection of valuable genotypes at the initial stages. Eighteen spring barley lines with high antioxidant activity, oil content, polyunsaturated fatty acid contents in oil, ash content, fiber content and highly vitreous endosperm were developed, which makes it possible to develop food varieties and to identify sources of valuable features for breeding. Varieties with high nutritional parameters of grain have been developed: Parnas, Vzirets, Ahrarii, Alehro, and Shedevr. Varieties Yavir and Troian have been submitted to variety trials. Degree of Implementation: The varieties developed have been introduced into the agricultural production of Ukraine. The scientific and methodological results have been included in the breeding programs of the Plant Production Institute named after V.Ya. Yuriev of NAAS and V.M. Remeslo Myronivka Institute of Wheat. Four copyright certificates for barley varieties were obtained. Scope of Implementation: scientific institutions of NAAS and the Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food of Ukraine, higher educational establishments, agrarian enterprises of Ukraine.
