Evaluation of Genetic Variability of Bread Wheat Genotypes under Normal Irrigation and Water Stress Conditions Using Multivariate Analysis

Abstract

The data collected were used to study the genetic diversity in 24 bread wheat genotypes originating from genotypes (22) from Bahteem Gene Bank, Genetic Resources Research Department, Agricultural Research Center, Giza, Egypt, and two check varieties (Sakha 94 and Giza 168). An experiment arranged on a randomized complete block design with three replications was performed in normal irrigation and drought stress conditions. Variance analysis indicated highly significant differences among the genotypes in all traits. Also, there is considerable variability among genotypes in all traits. The presence of genetic diversity among genotypes was recorded in our study. Percent decrease due to drought stress was a positive value for all traits, except chlorophyll content. Broad sense heritability values were very high under normal irrigation for days to heading, days to anthesis, days to maturity and grain yield per faddan. In both conditions, spike per m had direct positive effects with 0.487 and 0.363 while days to heading showed more negative effects with (-0.408) and (-0.562) respectively. The cluster analysis divided the genotypes into five groups under different (normal or stress) conditions, genetic divergence has been found related to several genetic and non-genetic conditions like the extent of genotype x environment interaction and components of genetic variation. Accordingly, results give a good chance to achieve genotypic improvement of wheat through the hybridization among genotypes taken from different clusters .where, genotypes 14, 2, 11, 23, 17 and 20 had high yielding and divergent under water shortage stress conditions for yield improvement in bread wheat