The development of drought tolerant and high yielding varieties/germplasm is the major objective of any wheatbreeding program. In the present study genetic architecture of physiological traits, yield and yield related parameters werestudied using the generation mean analysis to improve grain yield under drought stress. A drought tolerant line, 9877 and adrought susceptible line, NR371 were crossed to develop six generations (P1, P2, F1, BC1, BC2, and F2). Results revealedadditive, dominant and epistatic effects involved in the inheritance of characters which varied with trait and stress. Additivegene action was observed for canopy temperature, Chlorophyll ‘a’ and turgor potential. Although narrow sense heritabilityestimates for some traits were low but canopy temperature, chlorophyll ‘a’ and turgor potential expressed reasonably highheritability that supports the results of gene action providing an opportunity for early generation selection to use in abreeding program. The estimation of heritability for leaf carotenoids and turgor potential along with gene action for leafcarotenoids is a new work in wheat. The findings of present study suggested that physiological and bio-chemical traits arethe indicators of stress tolerance and their utilization in developing high yielding drought tolerant wheat germplasm canexpedite the breeding for stress tolerance.
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