Heterosis and combining ability of major agronomic traits in crosses between ear-branched wheat and common wheat.

In order to characterize the application value of ear-branched wheat as parents of hybrid wheat,ten crosses from 2 male parents(ear-branched wheat) and 5 female parents(common wheat) by NCⅡ crossing design were used,the heterosis and combining ability of nine agronomic traits were investigated.The results indicated that the heterosis over mid-parent and over the check in uppermost internode,spike length,plant height were high,and all of the crosses had positive heterosis.The variation range of heterosis over the check in grain weight per spike and 1000-grain weight were significantly different among crosses,and most of the crosses(90% and 70%) had positive heterosis.One cross(3218×Fen 2) which had significant heterosis on yield per plant over the check was identified,and the value was 16.7%.According to combining ability analysis,spike length,grain number per spike,grain weight per spike and 1000-grain weight were mainly affected by gene additional effect.Some parents had specific traits with high value of GCA can be used as parents in hybrid wheat breeding.