Abstract:
Sixty four bread wheat genotypes were tested in a simple lattice design at Kulumsa Agricultural Research Center
during 2014/15 main cropping seasonto estimate the extent of genetic variability. The genotypes showed
significant variation for all the traitsstudied except for biomass yield ha-1 and relatively wide range of the mean
values for most of the characters indicated the existence of variations among the tested genotypes.Moderate PCV
and GCV were recorded for 1000 kernel weight, grain yield, harvest index, number of grains spike-1 and number
of productive tiller. High heritability values were observed for days to heading, days to maturity, grain filling
period, 1000 kernel weight, number of spikelet spike
-1, spike length and plant height. Moderate PCV and GCV
were recorded for 1000 kernel weight, grain yield, harvest index, number of grains spike-1 and number of
productive tiller. Among the characters 1000 kernel weight showed high values of genetic gain whereas days to
maturity, grain yield, harvest index, productive tillers and number of grains plant-1 had moderate values of
genetic advance as percent of mean (GAM). The D2 analysis showed that the 64 genotypes were clustered into
nine clusters. Maximum inter cluster distance was observed between cluster I and IX (D2
=5112.1), followed by
that between clusters III and IX (D2
=4694.4) and VIII and IX (D2
=3871.9) which had shown they were
genetically more divergent from each other than any other clusters. Crosses between genotypes selected from
cluster I with cluster IX, cluster III with cluster IX and cluster VIII with cluster IX are expected to produce
relatively better genetic recombination and segregation in their progenies.Principal components (PC1 to PC6)
having Eigenvalue greater than one (significant), accounted 77.20% of the total variation. The first two principal
components PC1 and PC2 with values of 22.3% and 17.4% respectively, contributed more to the total variation.
According to their mean performance, genotypes Alidoro (5955.0 ± 480.83261a), Dure (5627.5 ± 604.57630ab)
and Sanate (5322.5±781.35299abc) were the best yielders. The present result is only an indication and we cannot
reach a definite conclusion. Therefore, it is advisable to continue with this study over several years and locations.
Keywords: Genetic variability, Heritability, PCV, GCV, Genetic advance
