Assessment of gene action for morpho-physiological and biochemical trait in bread wheat (Triticum aestivum L.)

Abstract

The present study was undertaken with the objective to assess the nature and magnitude of gene action for various morpho-physiological and biochemical traits in two crosses namely cross BHU 31 × HD 2733 and cross, HPYT 485 × HD 2967 in wheat. The six basic generations (P1, P2, F1, F2, B1 and B2 obtained from these crosses (made in Rabi 2018 and 2019) were evaluated for 13 quantitative traits including yield and micronutrient traits during Rabi 2020 in compact family block design with 3 replications at Research farm, RPCAU, Pusa and data were recorded on randomly selected plants per replication of each cross for all the traits. The estimation of micronutrient in wheat grains was done by X-Ray Fluorescence Spectrometry at Harvest-plus Division, ICRISAT, Hyderabad. The result regarding gene effect indicated that in both the crosses dominance and dominance × dominance effect for grain Zinc content (-29.00 & 19.18 and -9.79 & 7.04 respectively in cross I and II) and grain Iron content (-18.16 & 12.37 and -20.29 & 12.31 respectively in cross I and II) has significant role in expression of these traits. Duplicate type of gene interaction was found predominant for grain Zinc and Iron content and almost for all the traits due to opposite sign of dominance (h) and dominance × dominance (l) gene effect which tends to cancel the effect of each other in hybrid combination therefore selection should be advanced in later generation.