Abstract
This research was carried out to estimate the genetic parameters of fifty wheat genotypes received from the Agriculture Botany Division, Nepal Agriculture Research Council (NARC), Khumaltar, Lalitpur, in the winter season of 2014/2015 at Agriculture and Forestry University (AFU), Chitwan, Nepal. The experiment was performed in an alpha lattice design with two replications in five blocks in each replication and ten plots in each block. The analysis of variance showed highly significant differences among the genotypes for all the studied traits except spike length. This implies that, except for spike length, all other traits exhibited genetic variability. The phenotypic coefficient of variation (PCV) was generally higher than the genotypic coefficient of variation (GCV) for all characters. The difference between PCV and GCV was large in spike length followed by grain weight per spike, the number of grains per spike, grain yield, thousand-grain weight, and harvest index indicating that these traits are affected by the environment as well. Moderate to high heritability associated with a high genetic gain was observed for days to flag leaf appearance, panicle length, thousand-grain weight, grain yield, and harvest index indicating the involvement of additive gene action. Grain weight per spike, number of grains per spike, thousand-grain weight, biological yield, and harvest index were significantly correlated with grain yield indicating their important contribution to grain yield. WK 2525, WK 2437, and WK 2506 were three promising genotypes in terms of grain yield.
Highlights
Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) is the staple food and the most widely grown cereal crop in the world with 717.2 million mt planted in 2013/2014 [1]
WK 2550 had the highest number of grains per spike with 53 grains per spike whereas WK 2513 had the lowest number of grains per spike with 10 grains per spike. e mean grain weight per spike was 7.67 g
Grain yield had a highly significant negative correlation with days to flag leaf appearance, days to booting, days to heading, days to anthesis, days to maturity, and grain yield and was negatively and significantly correlated with plant height. is means that these traits negatively influence the grain yield
Summary
Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) is the staple food and the most widely grown cereal crop in the world with 717.2 million mt planted in 2013/2014 [1]. World wheat production is based almost entirely on two modern species: common or hexaploid bread wheat (Triticum aestivum, 2n 6x 42, AABBDD) and durum or tetraploid wheat In Nepal, wheat is the third staple food after rice and maize in terms of production area, production, and productivity [3]. It is grown in the winter season in Nepal and is cultivated from the Terai (100masl) to a high mountain (2300 masl). The area under wheat production in Nepal is
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