Generation means analysis of physiological and agronomical targeted traits in durum wheat (Triticum durum Desf.) cross

Abstract

Genetic parameters such as leaf relative water content, leaf chlorophyll content, plant height, above-ground biomass, harvest index, grain yield, and grain yield components of Bousselam/Mrb5 durum wheat (Triticum durum Desf.) cross were estimated based on generation means analysis. A, B, C, and D scaling and Chi-square (χ2) tests revealed the inadequacy of the simple additive-dominance model. This result suggests the presence of digenic epistasis for most studied traits; the duplicate epistasis was present for relative water content, above-ground biomass, and grain yield; and complementary epistasis was observed for chlorophyll content. Significant genotypic correlation coefficients appeared among grain yield, relative water content, and above-ground biomass. This suggests useful indirect selection criteria to improve simultaneously these traits, which showed significant heritability. It can be concluded that the traits investigated show a complex genetic behavior, which implies that early selection would be less efficient; therefore, it is recommended delaying the selection to advanced generations to benefit from the reduction of non-fixable genetic variation and exploit transgressive segregators due to the significant interaction additivity×additivity (i) of the gene and duplicated epistasis.