Shamal Riaz1, Khilwat Afridi2, Abdur Rauf1*, Muhammad Qayash3, Farooq Jan1, Ikramullah Khan1, Muhammad Sadiq1, Muhammad Faiq1, Muhammad Wisal1, Arsalan Khan1, Guleena Khan1, Ruby Wali Khan1, Kashmala Jabbar4, Yumeng Liu5 and Wang Xiaoyu6
1Garden Campus, Department of Botany, Abdul Wali Khan University, Mardan, Pakistan 2Cereal Crop Research Institute (CCRI) Pirsabak, Nowshera, Pakistan 3Garden Campus Department of Zoology, Abdul Wali Khan University, Mardan, Pakistan 4GPGGC, Mardan, Pakistan; 5Huazhong Agricultural University, China; 6Yunnan Agricultural University, China
*Corresponding author: rauf77@awkum.edu.pk
Wild plant species are one of the major sources of variation that can be used to improve wheat and assist in dealing with issues resulting from climate change and the increasing human population. In the present work, we comprehensively investigated the genetic variability among various advanced wheat (Triticum aestivum) cultivars using several morphological and yield-related traits. In total, 25 advanced wheat lines along with a check cultivar (AWL25), were used in a randomized complete block design with two biological replications. The experimental work was performed considering numerous morphological and yield-related traits including days to heading, days to maturity, spike length, spikelets per spike, grain yield, biological yield, and 1000 grain weight. The result of variance analysis showed a significant level of genetic variability in all trials, however, most of the parameters were not affected by genetic variability. In the case of days to heading, the mean performance ranged from 103 (AWL18) to 115 (AWL8). Similarly, days to 90% maturity ranged from 156 for the cultivar (AWL18) to 162 for the cultivar (AWL14). Noticeably, the means of spike length were observed in the range of 9.37 cm for cultivar (AWL9) and 14.60 cm for cultivar (AWL7), whereas the spikelets per spike were 18.17 for AWL21 cultivar and 24.67 for AWL2. Furthermore, the biological, grain yield and 1000 grain weight were observed with some degree of genetic variation in their mean value. Altogether, this work highlights important yield-related traits to improve different wheat varieties by exploring the germplasm diversity in the wheat population, thus facilitating future breeding programs.