Charyshskaya Krasavitsa’ is a new fodder cultivar of barnyard millet (Еchinochloa frumentacea Link) for western Siberia

Under the extreme continental conditions of Western Siberia, where hot and rather dry summers are preferable for the cultivation of crops atypical for the local flora, optimizing the development of animal husbandry by expanding a small range of sparsely distributed forage grasses and improving their composition with new cultivars is an urgent task. The objective of the study was to assess the productive and feeding potential of a new barnyard millet (Echinochloa frumentacea Link) cultivar. Cv. ‘Gotika’ served as the reference. The experimental part of the work was carried out in 2022–2024 in the experimental fields of the Federal Altai Scientific Center of Agro-Biotechnologies located in the forest-steppe zone of the Ob region, Western Siberia. The studies were conducted in the framework of open-field and laboratory experiments. Competitive variety tests showed that cv. ‘Charyshskaya Krasavitsa’ had statistically significant advantages vs. the reference in a number of agronomic and biological aspects (+35% in dry matter yield, +27% in green biomass yield, –6% in maturation time, +13% in plant height, and +13% in foliage percentage), as well as in qualitative characteristics (+40% in feed unit, +11% in digestible protein content, +56% in carotene content, and +66% in starch content). In 2024, ‘Charyshskaya Krasavitsa’ was submitted to the State Variety Trials in the Northwestern (2) and West Siberian (10) Regions.