Assessment of variability in phenological, morphological and yield traits in a biparental RIL population in wheat (Triticum aestivum L)

Abstract

A HUW-234 x HUW-468 RIL population in wheat comprising 160 RIL’s along with two parents and two released varieties were evaluated for phenological, morphological and seed traits in an augmented block design and variability was assessed through principal component analysis. PCA concentrated variability in first five principal components. The total variance explained with the first six PC’s was 76.65 per cent. Latent roots (Eigen values) for significant PCs ranged from 3.39 (PC1) to 1.05 (PC5). The first two PC’s that were used for constructing biplot graphs explained 42.77 %. The first PC contributed 25.48 per cent of total variation mainly contributed by the grain yield per plant (30.59 per cent), seed growth rate (30.44 per cent), spikelets per spike (16.15 per cent) and 1000-grain weight (16.03 per cent). The second component explained 17.29 per cent of variation contributed largely by days to seed fill (38.31 per cent), days to flowering (35.68 per cent) and seed length (11.41 per cent), while as the third, fourth and fifth component explained 15.29, 9.95 and 8.63 per cent of variations respectively. Six variables including seed yield per plant, seed growth rate, days to seed fill, spikelets per spike, 1000-grain weight and days to flowering contributed above the expected average to the variability in PC1 and PC2. Grain yield was positively correlated with seed growth rate followed by spikelets per spike, 1000-grain weight and seed breadth. A number of RILs were identified based on their superior performance for various phonological and yield traits. RILs 3, 11, 89 and 150 had superior performance for multiple traits indicating desirable segregation for various traits.

Keywords

• wheat
• rils
• augmented block design
• principal component analysis
• gt (genotype x trait) biplot