Genetic Diversity Analysis of Bread Wheat Varieties and Pre-release Lines Evaluated Under Timely Sown Irrigated Conditions

The involvement of genetically diverse parental lines in crossing programme of spring wheat is of prime importance to create desirable variability. To assess the magnitude of genetic divergence for grain yield and its component characters, a set of 36 spring wheat genotypes were grown consecutively for two crop seasons i.e., 2016-17 and 2017-18 at ICAR-IARI, New Delhi in a randomized complete block design with three replications in timely sown irrigated conditions Significant genotypic differences were observed for all 13 morpho-physiological characters in both the crop seasons suggesting the presence of substantial genetic variability among the genotypes studied. Cluster formation through Euclidean analysis based on the morpho-physiological characters, grouped the 36 genotypes into four clusters and ten clusters during the crop season 2016-17 and 2017-18, respectively. Considerable differences in the cluster means for different traits led to identification of diverse genetic parental lines for different traits, which could be used in recombination breeding to generate desirable genetic variability.