Evaluation of elite spring wheat genotypes for grain yield and other agronomic attributes in hills of Sudurpaschim Province, Nepal

Selection and release of high yielding and disease resistant varieties is the cost effective and ecologically sound approach for increasing the production and productivity of agricultural crop in Nepal. Twenty-two advanced bread wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) genotypes including commercial check variety "Sorgadwari", newly released check variety "Khumal Shakti" and Local Check variety " Jhadde" were evaluated under irrigated conditions at Gokuleshwor Agriculture and Animal Science College (GAASC), Baitadi, Nepal during 2022/2023. This study was carried out for the identification of high yielding genotypes under irrigated condition in western hills. The experiment was conducted in Alpha lattice design with two replications. The highly significant difference (p<0.01) among the genotypes was found for most of the traits viz., days to heading, days to anthesis, days to maturity, plant height, spikes per square meter, number of grains per spike, grain weight per spike, flag leaf area, thousand kernel weight, biomass yield and grain yield and non-significant difference for spike length. The mean grain yield ranged from 1908 to 4146 kg/ha with grand mean of 2766 kg/ha. The highest grain yield was produced by genotype NL 1474 (4146 kg/ha) which was followed by NL 1475 (3994 kg/ha), NL1597 (3536 kg/ha) and NL 1590 (3070 kg/ha). The check variety Sorgadwari and Khumal Shakti produced 3480 and 3070 kg/ha respectively while the local check variety Jhadde produced 2655 kg/ha. Similarly, highest TKW was produced by NL 1487 (68.5 g) followed by BL 5148 (67.2 g) and WK 3730 (66.3 g). The correlation analysis revealed that grain yield showed highly significant positive correlation with biomass yield (0.90**) and number of grains per spike (0.6**), spikes per square meter (0.7**), plant height (0.5**) and non-significant positive correlation with spike length (0.21) and grain weight per spike (0.1) and non-significant negative correlation with days to heading (-0.2) and days to maturity (-0.2). Cluster analysis revealed that Cluster III consists of 4 genotypes namely NL 1474, NL 1475, NL 1597 and Sorgadwari. This cluster represent with highest grain yield, number of spikes per meter square, number of grains per spike and grain weight per spike. Among the tested genotypes, NL 1474, NL 1475, NL 1597 and NL 1590 were found superior for grain yield and yield-related traits in comparison to three checks and could be recommended for hills of Sudurpaschim province after further testing in multi-environment and in farmer's field.