EVALUATION OF YIELD AND ITS COMPONENTS OF SOME PROMISING BREAD WHEAT GENOTYPES UNDER MIDDLE EGYPT CONDITIONS

The present investigation was carried out at the experimental farm of Mallawy Agricultural Research Station, Minia Governorate during 2018/2019 and 2019/2020 seasons. The aim of this study was to find out the best wheat genotypes with high yield potential among 18 F6 lines compared to three wheat cultivars in Egypt. The experimental design was randomized complete blocks design (RCBD) with three replicates. The analysis of variance showed significant differences among genotypes for all studied characters except biological yield in the first season. The advanced lines 8, 13 and 14 were the earliest genotypes either in heading (82.4, 80.7 and 81.5 days) or in maturity (135.5, 136.2 and 137.3 days), respectively. Line 4 had the tallest plants (125.8 cm). The highest number of spikes m-2 was recorded by line 16 (485 spikes m-2 ). The highest number of kernels spike-1 was produced by line 3 (80.2 kernels). Line 8 gave the highest 1000-kernel weight (55.07 g). Line 7 produced the highest grain and biological yields and harvest index (28.08 ardab faddan-1 , 11.900 ton faddan-1 and 35.57 %, respectively). Furthermore, the highest mean grain yield/fed was obtained from lines 3, 10, 8, 11, 16 and 14 and they were the most important genotypes for showing excellent performance on grain yield/fed (26.52, 26.52, 26.37, 26.06, 26.06 and 26.05 ardab faddan-1 respectively). They were also better than the best performed released check cultivar Misr 2 (25.59 ardab faddan-1 ). Besides, lines 10, 11, 14 and 16 in this study might be promising for developing heat stress tolerant cultivars. Therefore, the results of the present study concluded that Lines 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 14, 16 and 18 were superior over the other genotypes in producing higher grain yield and yield attributes and can be used in future breeding programs for the development of superior wheat cultivars at El-Minia Governorate condition