Genetic Evaluation and Breeding Strategies under Water Deficit Environment to Develop the Drought Tolerant Wheat Germplasm

Wheat stands out as the most extensively cultivated cereal crop and serves as a primary food source across numerous regions worldwide.Therefore, to assess wheat breeding material for sustained food security, an experiment was carried out.The research material comprised 44 genotypes, encompassing 8 lines, 4 testers, and 32 F 1 generations utilized for the assessment of various indices, including plant height (PH), flag leaf area (FLA), spikelet per spike (SPS), grain per spike (GPS), spike length (SL), 1000-grain weight (TGW), tillers per plant (TP), grain yield per plant (GYP), biological yield per plant (BYP), harvest index (HI), and relative water content (RWC).The data obtained from the studied attributes underwent an analysis of variance to discern significant differences among the lines and testers for each evaluated trait.The results revealed notable variations, indicating the significance of both genetic factors and environmental conditions on trait expression.Among the evaluated traits, Line (L3) and Tester (T2) consistently demonstrated the genotypes exhibiting good combining ability for both general combining ability (GCA) and specific combining ability (SCA).Such favorable combining ability suggests that the offspring resulting from crosses involving Line L3 and tester T2 are likely to inherit desirable traits for drought tolerance.Particularly, the cross between Line L3 and tester T2 mentioned exceptional performance in most of the studied traits and proved to be a promising combination for