Determining Morphological Traits for Selecting Wheat (Triticum Aestivum L.) with Improved Early-Season Forage Production

Winter wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) is the major annual crop in the Southern Great Plains of the USA grown as dual-purpose (forage and grain) crop. Wheat breeding has focused on maximizing grain yield and tolerance to abiotic and biotic stresses. Because of a lack of clearly defined selection criteria for breeding forage-type wheat, breeders usually rely on very laborious means to measure forage quantity and quality or they use imprecise visual estimates to quantify forage production. In a series of experiments conducted at Vernon, TX during 2003-2005, we determined correlations between selected morphological traits and the early-season forage DM yield in a range of wheat breeding lines and commercial cultivars evaluated by the Wheat Breeding Program of Texas AM thus, the morphological traits evaluated in our studies were desirable for selection of wheat with improved forage productivity.