Pursuit of stripe rust resistance and association of yield contributing traits in elite bread wheat yield trial

摘要

Among the foliar diseases stripe rust caused by Puccinia striiformis f. sp. tritici, is a severe threat to wheat crop. In the history its epidemics have caused severe wheat yield losses in Pakistan. This study was thus anticipated to evaluate genetic diversity for stripe rust resistance and association of yield contributing traits in wheat germplasm to mitigate the yield damages. Data on morphological traits was recorded on five randomly selected plants. Disease severity %age and the host reactions notes were taken three times in the field. Highest variance 61.256 found for coefficient of infection described different levels of host reaction against pathogen. Factor 1 with eigen value 2.015 highlighted the trend of variability in days to physiological maturity, spike length and thousand grain weight. Factor 2 (eigen value 1.478) depicted the extent of change in spikes per plant, grain yield and coefficient of infection for stripe rust and these two factors showed 58% of total variability. Cluster analysis described that cluster one exhibited medium mean value (11.66) of CI for yellow rust and high value (1.45) for grain yield. Results revealed high variability in traits of genotypes under study. Genotypes from cluster I and III can be selected and exploited for durable yellow rust resistance, higher grain yield and for early maturity respectively.