GENETIC DIVERGENCE IN F4:6WHEAT LINES FOR YIELD AND ITS CONTRIBUTING TRAITS

Studying genetic divergence of quantitative traits and their contribution towards yield is essential for developing high yielding varieties. To study genetic divergence of F 4:6 wheat lines for yield contributing traits, an experiment was conducted comprising 48 advance wheat lines and a check cultivar Janbaz at the University of Agricultural Peshawar, Pakistan during 2010-11. The research was laid out in alpha lattice design with 2 replications. Analysis of variance revealed highly significant differences among wheat lines for yield and related traits. Moderate to high magnitude of heritability estimates (0.53-0.93) were observed for days to heading, flag leaf area, plant height (cm), spikes plot -1 , grain weight spike -1 , grain yield and harvest index, while low to moderate heritability estimates (0.23-0.48) for spike length, grains spike -1 , 1000-grain weight and biological yield. The selection response were 6.40 days for heading, 9.57 cm 2 for flag leaf area, 11.74 cm for plant height, 0.83 cm for spike length, 185.11 spikes for spikes plot -1 , 7.49 for grains spike -1 , 0.67 g for grain weight spike -1 , 5.07 g for 1000 grain weight, 628.50 kg ha -1 for biological yield, 855.92 kg ha -1 for grain yield and 5.56 % for harvest index, respectively. Selection differentials were 208.4 spikes for spikes plot -1 , 1.9 cm for spike length, 13.4 for grains spike -1 , 0.7 g for grain weight spike -1 , 8.1 g for 1000 grain weight and 795.4 kg ha -1 for grain yield, respectively. Spikes plot -1 , grains spike -1 , grain weight spike -1 , 1000-grain weight and harvest index had high correlations with grain yield. The crossings of Tatara, Ghaznavi-98 and Wafaq performed better than the check cultivar for most of the yield based desirable traits.