Genetic analysis for morphological traits and protein content in bread wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) under normal and heat stress environments

An experiment was conducted during rabi season of the years 2008–09 and 2009–10 with a set of 45 half diallel cross combinations, involving 10 diverse parents to estimate genetic variability parameters for morphological traits and protein content in bread wheat under normal and heatstress environment. Analysis of variance revealed significant differences for the two environments, whereas, differences over the years were non-significant for all the traits. The pooled data over the years, exhibited highly significant differences for all the traits under both normal as well as heat-stress environments. Among the variability parameters, estimates of PCV were generally higher than that of GCV for all the ten traits, indicating thereby role of environment in total variability. High estimates (more than 80%) of broad sense heritability were recorded in parents and their F₁s for tillers per plant, plant height, spike length, grains per spike, grain yield and 1000-grain weight; these traits also showed more than 25 percent narrow-sense heritability in F1s under both normal and heat stress environment. High heritability estimates, indicate the occurrence of additive gene effects for these six traits, suggesting that selection will be advantageous for these characters in subsequent generations.