Inheritance of Eight Agronomic Characters in a Winter Wheat Cross1

Abstract

Parents, F19, F29 and first generation backcrosses (B1 and B2) of a ‘Centurk’ ✕ ‘Bezostaia 1’ cross (Triticum aesti. vum L.) were grown in a space‐planted experiment to obtain genetic information pertaining to grain yield and seven other agronomic characters.The F1 deviated significantly from the midparent values for heading date, plant height, and kerneis/spikeiet indicating a sizable amount of nonadditive gene action for those traits. Narrow‐sense heritability estimates were very high for heading datea moderately high for kernel weight and plant height, moderate for number of tillers/plant, and low for spikeiets/spike, kernels/spike, kernels/spikelet, and grain yield. Several of those estimates were considered biased upwaxd as epistasis was found to contribute significantly to heading date, plant height, tiller number, kernels/spikelet, and grain yield. No epistasis was detected for spikelets/spike, kernels/spike, or kernel weight, indicating that estimates of gene effects for those characters were free from linkage bias. Duplicate epistasis was detected for heading date and grain yield, suggesting difficulty would be encountered in selecting for earlier maturity or higher yield in this cross. Additive effects were the main source of genetic variation forkernel weight, indicating that early generation selection for higher kernel weight should be effective in this material. The prospects for increasing tiller number were not as favorable as were those for kernel weight.