Phenotypic evaluation of elite spring bread wheat genotypes for hybrid potential traits

Abstract

Wheat breeding has significantly contributed to enhancing yield potential and stability. However, one of the most promising technologies for further sustainable yield increases, hybrid wheat, is still limited due to lack of well-established heterotic groups and insufficient heterosis to compensate cost of hybrid seed production. Thus, optimizing the appropriate parents and combinations of floral and flowering traits is important to enhance outcrossing ability. Phenotyping methods for floral and flowering traits were applied in this study. Wide phenotypic variation was observed for all the traits assessed. High heritability coupled with high genetic advance for anther extrusion, pollen mass, duration of floret opening, and openness of florets were observed. Ideally, visual anther extrusion and pollen shedding appear as promising traits allowing indirect selection of other associated floral traits, such as pollen mass and duration and degree of floret opening. Adopting these two traits in further selection will allow scoring of large numbers of genotypes in a very short time.