Gene Effects and Interaction Analysis for Grain Yield and Some Quantitative Characters in Bread Wheat (Triticum aestivum)

To elucidate the inheritance of days to heading, days to maturity, harvest index and grain yield in bread wheat, generation mean analysis involving twelve generations of two crosses was used. Individual as well as joint scaling tests indicated the presence of higher order epistatic interactions in all the traits. The relative magnitude of epistasis was more than the main effects. Non-fixable gene effects were higher than the fixable gene effects indicating greater role of non-additive effects in the inheritance of these traits. The breeding approach that can exploit both additive and non-additive gene effects like diallel selective mating is suggested for achieving significant genetic gain.