AN INVESTIGATION ON GENETIC VARIABILITY FOR DIFFERENT QUANTITATIVE AND QUALITATIVE TRAITS OF WHEAT (Triticum aestivum L) GENOTYPES

Abstract

Wheat is the most important fasten diet of country’s population
and major cereal crop of the country. The proposed research study
was conducted in experimental field of plant breeding & molecular
genetics department, Faculty of Agriculture, University of Poonch,
Rawalakot during 2016. Twenty-five genotypes of wheat were used
as source population. Data on diverse quantitative & qualitative
traits like Plant height, peduncle length, seed length, 1000 seed
weight etc. was recorded from randomly selected guarded plants
from each line of experimental unit. Performance and diversity of
wheat lines was assessed for certain morphological traits, grain
yield and its components using principle component analysis and
cluster analysis. On basis of overall performance, it was concluded
that three quantitative traits showed remarkable variation, which
were plant height, peduncle length and stem diameter. Maximum
linkage distance was showed between cluster A and cluster B, so
members of these clusters showed variability among themselves.
Thus, these genotypes could further be used in breeding programs
for maximizing yield.