Morphological evaluation of wheat genotypes for grain yield under arid environment of Balochistan

Wheat is the most famous cereal crop in the world mainly used as a staple food for mankind.Drought is a leading environmental stress that restricts the productivity of wheat in water-scare regions.In this study, we evaluated the performance of 10 advanced lines and two commercial varieties for grain yield during 2018-19, at Balochistan Agriculture College, Quetta.Results revealed the highly significant differences between genotypes for number of days to heading, days to maturity, plant height at maturity (cm), number of fertile tillers plant -1 , number of grains spike - 1 , 1000-grain weight (g), grain yield plant -1 and grain yield (kg/ha), while significant (P > 0.05) for days to grain filling period.In addition, the principal component analysis indicated that first two principal components (PC1 and PC2) accounted for 83.77% of the total variation.The genotype BAC-51 performed superior for grain yield and other morphological traits, suggesting that BAC-51 should be tested at different locations in the upland of Balochistan and may be released as a drought-tolerant variety after the certification process.