Evaluation of Wheat Genotypes for Earliness and Growth Traits Exposed to High Temperature through Delayed Planting

Abstract

Wheat grain yield in Pakistan is low since it is adversely affected by various biotic and abiotic stresses. Taking abiotic stress, heat stress is one of the key reasons of reduced wheat productivity in Pakistan. The current study focuses on the assessment of the performance of advance wheat varieties at normal sowing and late sowing dates. For this purpose, eight genotypes were grown in a Randomized Complete Block Design with three replications at the experimental farm of Nuclear Institute of Agriculture, Tandojam. The observations were recorded on plant height (cm), days to heading, days to maturity, days to senescence, biological yield plant-1 (g) and harvest index. The analysis of variance of all the genotypes at normal and high temperature revealed significantly differences at P≤0.01 for all the traits, signifying the reliability of used materials for further breeding experiments in order to improve bread wheat at normal and stress conditions. Low reduction percentage in performance at late sowing for the traits days to heading and plant height was shown by the cultivar V3. Similarly, the genotype Sehar-2006 also showed low reduction percentage in performance for days to maturity, biological yield plant-1 and seed index at high temperature. The above mentioned genotypes may prove better crop resources for stress breeding in wheat crop.