ABSTRACT
This chapter gives an account of the current situation with regard to pre-harvest sprouting in rye and the wheatrye hybrid triticale. The main areas of rye production lie in central and eastern Europe on poorer and sandy soils that generally are less suited to growing other cereals. The processing quality of rye is determined, in part, by precipitation and temperature during the grain filling phase and harvest period. In designing a breeding programme to improve pre-harvest sprouting resistance, suitable testing methods for screening the material have to be applied. The agronomic measures practised with rye to reduce the incidence and the effects of pre-harvest sprouting can also be applied to triticale. Considering the importance of character associations in a breeding procedure, only scarce and contradictory information is available for triticale. More intensive research on all aspects of sprouting in triticale is needed to obtain reliable information.
