Identification of superior spring durum wheat genotypes under irrigated and rain-fed conditions

Abstract

An important objective of wheat improvement programmes is to breed varieties for high yield in optimum conditions and for minimum yield reduction under stress-prone conditions such as heat and drought. Analyses of yield and its components in multiple years allow a comprehensive and comparative understanding of genetic yield potential and stress-tolerance mechanisms in the study germplasm. The present study was carried out to evaluate performance of elite varieties and landraces of spring durum wheat under different water regimes, determine the repeatability of the examined traits, and identify superior genotypes for their potential use in breeding for drought tolerance. A total of 97 accessions of spring durum wheat (T. durum Desf.) were evaluated under rain-fed and well-watered conditions in the nursery of the Centre for Agricultural Research at Martonvásár, Hungary (2011. The experiments were laid out in an unbalanced, incomplete alpha lattice block design. The trait with the lowest broad-sense repeatability was seed length (0.075), while high h 2 values were observed for heading date (0.89), thousand-grain weight (0.85) and the protein content (0.85). Grain yield showed moderate level of repeatability (0.53) across the three years. The principal component analysis revealed that grain yield (t/ha) is positively associated with the fertile tiller number, chlorophyll content values at early waxy ripeness stages and plant height. Based on biplot analysis, 'DP-133′, 'DP-017′ and 'DP-061′ proved to be the best durum cultivars in terms of yield whereas genotypes 'DP-011′, 'DP-185′, 'DP-126′ and 'DP-136′ preceded them with their good yield stability.

Genetic Advance and Grain Yield Stability of Moroccan Durum Wheats Grown under Rainfed and Irrigated Conditions

“…De Vita et al [5] worked on a set of Italian durum wheat genotypes with Rht genes released from 1975 to 2003 and highlighted that "Tiziana" and "Giusto" developed in 2001 have high-yield stability across the tested environments. In agreement with previous studies [13,43,50,52,58,59], our results indicate that modern durum wheat varieties were more responsive to changes in seasons and treatments. In fact, the most stable varieties would not necessarily give the best grain yield [60]; therefore, stability per se should not be the only selection parameter.…”

“…Similarly, Ercoli et al [47] found that the increase in grain yield was due to a higher number of spikes and greater spike size and suggested that good growing conditions during the initial stages of crop development favored the development of tillers and promoted the floret fecundation. A significant correlation between grain yield and kernel weight was found under rainfed conditions, but not under irrigated ones, which is consistent with previous studies [26,[48][49][50] which reported that kernel weight influences grain production mostly in rainfed areas. Similarly, Bányai et al [50] found that thousand-kernel weight proved a high repeatability under drought stress during the three years of the experiment.…”

“…A significant correlation between grain yield and kernel weight was found under rainfed conditions, but not under irrigated ones, which is consistent with previous studies [26,[48][49][50] which reported that kernel weight influences grain production mostly in rainfed areas. Similarly, Bányai et al [50] found that thousand-kernel weight proved a high repeatability under drought stress during the three years of the experiment. On the other hand, the consistent relationships between this yield component and grain yield, under rainfed conditions, would suggest that probably breeding was performed for cultivars to be grown under rainfed conditions.…”

Single versus repeated heat stress in wheat: What are the consequences in different developmental phases?

“…The reactions of plants to drought and high temperature stress are often species-specific, but there are also large differences among cultivars within a species [ 5 , 31 , 37 , 39 , 46 ]. We also found large variations among the 51 wheat cultivars included in this experiment not only in their grain yielding abilities under control conditions but also in their sensitivities to the various heat stress treatments.…”

Stability and Plasticity of Collection Samples of Durum Spring Wheat in the Forest-Steppe Conditions of Ukraine

“…The method for assessing the ecological plasticity and variance of its stability of varieties based on the analysis of variance and regression makes it possible to assess their reactions under different growing conditions [12,13].…”