Genetic Study of Grain Yield and its Components in Bread Wheat Using Generation Mean Analysis under Water Stress Condition

Abstract In order to study the inheritance of grain yield and its components in bread wheat, two cultivars, Karchyya(drought and salinity tolerant) and Gaspard (sensitive to drought and salinity stress) were crossed.Parents together with F1, F2, F3, BC1and BC2 generations were evaluated using a randomized complete block design with three replications in 2008-2009 growing season.Grain weight per spike, number of grains per spike, 1000 grain weight, number of spikes per plant and grain yield per plant were recorded. Analysis of variance indicated significant differencesamong generationsforall traits. Mid-parent heterosis for number of grains per spike and high-parent heterosisfor rest of the traits indicated the role of dominance gene action in governing the studied characters. Furthermore, estimates of  degree of dominance was in the over-dominance range for all traits. Based onthe generation mean analysis and the subsequent joint scaling test,additive-dominance model wasinsufficient for explaining the inheritance of the agronomic characters under study. Therefore, different models consisting of four to six parameterswere fitted to the generation means.Considering all traits, at least one epistaticeffect was significant in the fitted models.These results suggest the importance of non-additive gene action in controlling the grain yield and its components in the terminal water stress condition. Therefore, breeding programs utilizing this type of gene action are recommended if hybridization problems could be solved in this important crop. The broad-sense and narrow-sense heritability of the traits were estimated from 0.31 to 0.42 and from 0.10 to 0.42, respectively. The narrow-sense heritability of 1000 grain weight and number of grains per spike were higher than that of grain yield per plant. This suggests that selection for grain yield in segregating generations would not be as effective as the yield components such as 1000 grain weight and number of grains per spike.