Study on Genetic Variability in Wheat Germplasm grown in the hills of Uttarakhand

A study was conducted to know the extent of variability among 15 quantitative characters in 264 genotypes of wheat grown in the hills of Kumaun Himalayas at Vivekanand Parvatiya Krishi Anusandhan Sansthan, Almora. It was observed that peduncle length, flag leaf length, flag leaf width, biomass/plant, 1000-grain weight and grain yield/plant recorded high heritability as well as moderate to high genetic advance and coefficient of variability was found high for almost all the characters except for days to 75% spike emergence, plant height, days to maturity and number of spikelets/spike. This suggests that sufficient variability for these characters exist in this set of hill wheat germplasm which can be utilized for further improvement.