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rust diseases, with good quality and excellent adaptability. It

was followed in the first half of the seventies by the varieties

Rannyaya 12, Avrora and Kavkaz. By this time the national

yield average reached or exceeded 3 t/ha each year, and by

1977 this figure was as high as 4 t/ha, which meant that in

addition to the stable provision of domestic needs, Hungary

began exporting wheat again.

The production in Hungary of wheat varieties bred by

Lukyanenko was not only of importance due to the spectacular

rise in yield averages and the termination of the wheat shortage,

but also because these results were achieved with varieties

which, in addition to good yield potential, had good or excellent

milling and baking quality, while their abiotic resistance

properties (frost resistance, winter hardiness, drought tolerance,

daylength sensitivity) made them able to survive the extremes

of the Hungarian climate.

Thus, within the complex of variety and production

standard, the use of a new variety increases yields due to its

potential yielding ability (direct effect) and also stimulates

improvements in the production technology (indirect effect),

which again leads to a rise in yields. In addition to

improvements in the general background of crop production

and in the material and technical basis of agriculture, breeding

and seed production thus make a considerable contribution

to the increase in wheat yields.

Lukyanenko and wheat breeding in Martonvasar* By the

end of the fifties, the then director of the Martonvasar research

institute, Sandor Rajki, recognised the importance of the

Krasnodar wheat varieties, particularly Bezostaya 1. The most

important and most frequently used crossing partners in the

breeding programme, especially after the frost killing of the

wheat crop in the early years of the sixties, were Soviet varieties,

particularly those bred by Lukyanenko. The use of Krasnodar

wheat varieties in breeding gained new momentum in 1972

when Laszlo Szunics, who defended his PhD thesis in Krasnodar

as a student of Lukyanenko's, came to work in Martonvasar.

The whole of the breeding team, which also included Laszlo

Balia, Dezso Szalay and Gyula Szilagyi, was united in efforts

to exploit the inheritance of Lukyanenko.

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