Estimates of Variability, Genetic Parameters and Associated Relationships for Grain Yield and Its Components in Barley under Ras-Sudr Conditions

Abstract

Emerging of stress tolerant and high yielding crops has grown in importance, particularly in light of global population growth and environmental changes. In order to improve barley production under difficult conditions, high yielding genotypes should be chosen based on the performance and genetic variability of advanced cultivars produced in Ras-Sudr salinity water. Throughout three seasons (2016- 2019), the F2 generation of the cross CHK2 x Australia was planted in naturally saline soil (5000 ppm) and irrigated with naturally salty water at 6300 ppm. Genetic parameters, correlations, and path coefficient analyses have all been investigated for all traits. Variance analysis demonstrated the presence of highly significant variations across all genotypes for all variables, with both phenotypic and genotypic variation coefficients for grain/plant were high, indicating great variety for genetic improvement by selection. Using hierarchical clustering, breeding genotypes and their parents were divided into three groups according to their performance in salt conditions: highly, intermediately, and lowly. Furthermore, for all analysed parameters, broad sense heritability vary from 70.61% to 96.52%. The genetic advance, expressed as a percentage of mean estimates, varied from 4.82% for days to
maturity to 45.14% for grain yield/plant. The number of spikes/plant, seed index, and grain yield/plant had high heritability and genetic advance. However, phenotypic correlation coefficients revealed positive significant relationships among grain yield/plant and plant height, spike length, number of grains/spike, and seed index. Furthermore, the number of spikes/plant, grains/spike, seed index, and
days to maturity all had a positive and direct effect on grain yield, whereas plant height, days to heading, and spike length all had a negative and direct effect on yield, indicating the importance of these variables in improving production.