Variability, heritability and genetic advance of some grain quality traits and grain yield in durum wheat genotypes

Ivanka Petrova, Krasimira Taneva, Violeta Bozhanova

Abstract: The main priority in durum wheat breeding is the creation of high yielding varieties with improved grain quality. The study were carried out to determine the variability, heritability, genetic advance for the following grain quality traits: protein content (PC), wet gluten (WG), yellow pigment in grain (YPG), sedimentation value (SDS), vitreousness (VS), thousand kernel weight (TKW), test weight (TW) and grain yield (GY) of 24 durum wheat genotypes - varieties and breeding lines of different origin: Bulgaria (FCI – Chirpan, DAI – G. Toshevo), Europe, CYMIT – Mexico and ICARDA – Syria. All genotypes were grown under field conditions in competitive variety trial in three replications during three harvest years (2014 – 2016) in the experimental field of Field Crops Institute – Chirpan, Bulgaria. All parameters were evaluated on whole grains on standard methods. Analysis of variance revealed the presence of highly significant (P ≤ 0.01) variation among genotypes for all studied traits. The Phenotypic Coefficient of Variation (PCV) was generally higher than the Genotypic Coefficient of Variation (GCV) for all studied traits, indicating the influence of the growing season. The greatest PCV was found for sedimentation value (SDS 44.54%), grain yield (GY 16.92%) and yellow pigment in grain (YPG 14.8%) and the greatest GCV was found for the same traits – SDS 43.45%, YPG 14.3% and GY 10.2%. The lowest PCV was found for test weight (TW 1.69%) and protein content (4.66%). The estimated values of broad-sense heritability were found between 52.0% for wet gluten (WG) and 95.2% for SDS sedimentation value. A high level of heritability was also determined for yellow pigment in grain (YPG 92.4%), followed by thousand kernel weight (TKW 72.4%) and protein content (PC 67.2%); moderate level – for test weight (TW 47.4%) and grain yield (GY 36.3%) and relatively low level – for vitreousness (VS 29.1%). The highest genetic advance was calculated for SDS sedimentation value. High heritability and considerable genetic advance for SDS indicated the predominance of an additive gene effect in controlling this trait and reveal the possibility to conduct effective selection. For protein content and thousand kernel weight high heritability was associated with low genetic advance, indicating the influence of dominant and epistatic genes in heritability of this traits and reveal slower breeding progress in their improvement.

Keywords: durum wheat; genetic advance; grain quality traits; heritability

Date published: 2019-04-02