Evaluation of the 3rd Generation of Backcrosses and its Parents of Two Bread Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) Cultivars for Salt Tolerance

Abstract

A field experiment was conducted during the winter season of 2017-2018 at the Center of Plant Breeding and Genetics, AlTuwaitha Research Station (30km southeast of Baghdad) to evaluate the performance of two bread wheat genotypes at the 3rd back cross generation with their parents, cv. Furait , Baraka and Iraq under saline field condition (12 dSm-1). The objective of this study was to evaluate the beneficial effects of different back crosses and its parents in targeted field condition, on grain yield and its components of bread wheat. Results showed that the two generations of (Furait x Baraka) and (Furait x Iraq) were significantly exceeded their parents and gave the highest values of spikes m-2 (207.0 , 196.3), grain spike-1 ( 37.0, 39.0), 1000 seed weight (34.3, 33.3g ) and grain yield m-2 (244.4, 242.7g), respectively. Phenotypic variation and the percentage of broad sense heritability for plant height, tillers m-2, grains spike-1, 1000 seed weight and grain yield m-2 were highest compared with the value of environmental variation, and emphasized the important of genotypic variation and the ability to improve the desirable quantitative traits and reflects the high percentage of heritability.