GENETIC ANALYSIS OF THE ROLE OF INTERMATING IN AN INTERVARIETAL CROSS OF BREADWHEAT

Abstract

The effectiveness of population improvement methods was compared with those of the conventional approaches in a winter x spring cross of breadwheat. The biparental progenies developed through the North Carolina design I (NCnand III (NC III), and their F3 and parents were evaluated. Highly significant differences among generations were observed for days to heading, plant height, grains/spike, grain yield, harvest index, and grain weight. The mean performance of all SIPs exceeded that of their corresponding F3 progenies in both designs. In NC I, significant additive genetic variance was observed for heading days, plant height and grains/spike. However, for days to heading, plant height and grains yield, the dominance variance was significant. In NC III the additive and dominance components were significant for all the characters except grainsfspike. Many unfavourable correlations observed in F3 changed to favourable in SIPs. The NC UI was better than NC I for estimation of gene effects and exploitation of variability.