Estimation of Heritability and Genetic Advance of Yield and Yield Related Traits in Bread Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) Genotypes at Ofla District, Northern Ethiopia

A field experiment was conducted at Ofla District, Northern Ethiopia in 2014, with the objective of estimating nature and magnitude of variations existing in bread wheat genotypes.Twenty six genotypes were laid out in randomized complete block design with 3 replications.Twelve quantitative traits were subjected to analysis of variance and genetic analyses.There were significant differences (p<0.05)among genotypes for 10 quantitative traits including grain yield.Heritability in broad sense ranged from 4.57% for number of tillers per plant to 96.86% for thousand kernel weight.The range for genetic advance as percent of mean was 3.04% (number of tillers per plant) to 19.74% (biomass yield).High heritability estimates and moderate genetic advance as percent of mean was computed for days to heading, days to maturity and thousand kernel weight.Besides, genotypic coefficient of variance and phenotypic coefficient of variance had low magnitude of differences for these traits.Hence, the traits are highly heritable, selection based on these traits would improve the characters.The top 3 genotypes that performed better than the standard checks for grain yield and early maturity were ETBW7888, ETBW7892 and ETBW7887 with grain yield of 6.4, 5.6 and 5.5 t haG 1 , respectively.Grain yields of the standard checks were 3.9, 4.7 and 3 t haG 1 for Danda, Hidase and Digalu respectively.Besides, those genotypes were earlier to mature (110-112 days) than the standard checks (119-129 days).Therefore, direct selection of these genotypes can be rewarding.As the result is based on single location in a year, confirming across locations and over years is important.