Performance assessment of wheat genotypes based on the superiority index using additive main and multiplicative interaction effects and BLUP analysis

The simultaneous use of additive main and multiplicative interaction effects (AMMI) and best linear unbiased predictors (BLUP) has been reflected in the multi-location evaluation of trials for number of crops. The additional advantages of both these approaches would be combined in superiority index (SI) to have an edge over the commonly used approaches. The promising wheat genotypes had been considered under multi location trails in Peninsular zone of India during the cropping seasons of 2018-2019 and 2019-2020. The highly significant environmental effects contributed 44.1% & 35.3% of total sum of squares in the AMMI analysis, 20.6% & 26.2% were augmented by G × E interaction, while 10.8% & 7.5% were contributed by the genotypes.Wheat genotypes of UAS3001, MACS6222, GW322, and DDW48 expressed their superiority in BLUP values. Superiority indexes and adaptability measures had identified WHD964 and DDW48 genotypes for the second year of study. More than 75% variations among the considered measures were due to the first two interaction principal components (IPCA’s) under Biplot analysis. Number of superiority index measures were clustered with adaptability measures in the same quadrant. Superiority index, the weighted measure of yield and consistent performance of genotypes would be more appropriate for stability and adaptabilities studies.