Variability and correlation study of morphological traits in bread wheat genotypes

Hafiz Ghulam Muhu-Din Ahmed; Noor Fatima; Muhammad Owais; Anns Faisal; Sheeza Tariq; Muhammad Ali; Muhammad Irfan; Muhammad Ameen

doi:10.38211/joarps.2022.3.2.39

The morphological traits of wheat grain strongly influence the yield and directly affect the grain yield of the crop. The necessity to overcome the human demand of wheat, the grain yield should be increased. The current experiment was organized to study the morphological traits of wheat and their association with yield related traits. The experiment was done in the randomized complete block design including three replications and twenty genotypes under normal condition in the cropping season of 2021. The result revealed by the analysis of variance indicated that there is highly significant difference among the studied genotypes, traits like spikelet per spike (SPS), flag leaf area (FLA), grain yield per spike (GYS), number of grains per spike (GPS), biological yield (BY) and grain yield per plant (GYP) showed the genetic potential and variability among the mwhile the traits like plant height (PH) and peduncle length (PL) are significant. Correlation analysis showed that grain yield per plant is highly associated with flag leaf area (0.78**) followed by biological yield which is highly correlated with plant height (0.77**) and number of grain per spike was also highly correlated with spikelet per spike (0.70**)while spikelet per spike and number of grains per spike associated non-significantly with plant height (0.21ns), (0.23ns)and biological yield correlated non-significantly with spikelet per spike (0.21ns).The highest mean values recorded by the genotype G6 (ASS-11) for the traits SPS (21.22), PL (16.74) and BY (23.33), followed by the genotype G9 (Lasani-08) for the traits SPS (23.22), PL (17.36), FLA (15), GPS (35.83) and by the genotype G12 (Chakwal-97) for the traits PH (94.63), BY (22.23), GPS (33.16). Hence, these genotypes would be utilized in breeding or selection programs to develop wheat cultivars with high yields. The yield related traits that are listed and highlighted in this experiment should be given importance in the breeding of wheat to increase the yield of the wheat plant that have strong association with the yield.