Development of bread wheat cultivars for increasing grain yield potential and quality characteristics in moderate zone of Iran.

Many research projects were performed within the framework of this research program which their objective has been improvement of new cultivars of hexaploid wheat with good grain yield potential, good bread-making quality, resistance to major diseases of temperate zone including stripe rust, leaf rust, and stem rust, and also good agronomic traits including short plant height, lodging tolerance, resistance to shattering along with fitted earliness to agronomic cropping schemes in temperate regions. More over to that, other studies have been considered for strengthening the bases of agronomic and breeding research works to overcome the facing challenges of the same cropping system. Many crosses have been performed among the domestic and exotic germplasm under the crossing projects during the first 5 years of this research program. The extracted pure lines of those crosses are gradually entering the yield trials at the present time and at the future will do as well. To extract pure breeding lines, the developed germplasm of crossing projects were handled, evaluated and screened out through conduction of segregating populations projects every year. For this, shuttle breeding scheme was also used. The evaluation of grain yield and important traits of those breeding lines originated from domestic or exotic crosses was followed through conduction of preliminary, regional preliminary (over 5-7 locations), regional advanced (over 5-7 locations) and adaptation trials(over 8-9 locations). Many promising breeding lines were nominated for on-farm and demonstration trials under farmer fields which out of them and based on all concerning traits, M-79-7, M-84-17 and M-84-18 were picked for release. These three lines were denominated as "Bahar", "Parsi" and "Sivand" respectively in 2007 and 2009 and added to national list of wheat trade cultivars. More over breeding lines M-79-6, M-81-13, M-82-6 and M-83-17 due to their good yield potential and adaptive traits have been multiplied under farmer fields and might be continued for cultivation as such. The genotype of under handling germplasm for high molecular glutenin subunits (HMW) was determined electrophoresis project every year. This assay was also performed for crossing blocks germplasm of cold and temperate climate breeding programs. In overall through 5 years running of this research program three irrigated wheat cultivars released, more than 30 technical reports published, several scientific papers published in scientific journals or presented at the scientific symposia. The seed multiplication of improved cultivars was also one of the main practices under this research program followed every year.