article · Agronomy
Rising temperatures present a significant threat to global wheat production, necessitating the development of resilient, high-yielding crop varieties. An evaluation of six diverse bread wheat parents and fifteen hybrid crosses was conducted across two locations under standard and late sowing conditions to assess performance under heat stress. Gene action was analysed alongside sequence variation in dehydration-responsive element-binding transcription factors. Genetic analysis revealed that non-additive gene action largely governed grain yield and related characteristics, with narrow-sense heritability remaining low to moderate. Two parental genotypes demonstrated beneficial alleles for early maturity and high yields under thermal stress, supported by sequence homology with known heat-tolerant wheat species. Furthermore, specific hybrid crosses performed exceptionally well for grain yield under heat stress. Positive correlations between yield, chlorophyll levels, plant height, and grain weight highlight practical criteria for selecting promising lines in early breeding generations.
Abrupt climatic shifts and warming temperatures threaten wheat yields and food security globally. Identifying parent varieties and hybrid crosses that maintain productivity under heat stress allows breeders to develop resilient crops more rapidly. Relying on easily measurable physical markers also simplifies the selection process, accelerating the timeline for delivering robust varieties to farmers.
This research provides breeding programmes and seed companies with specific parental lines and hybrid combinations for developing climate-resilient wheat cultivars. The findings also define practical phenotypic selection criteria for field screening. Because the material is evaluated at the experimental hybrid stage, the work represents early-stage research that requires further field trials and regulatory testing before commercial seed release.
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High temperature is a major environmental stress that devastatingly affects wheat production. Thenceforth, developing heat-tolerant and high-yielding wheat genotypes has become more critical to sustaining wheat production particularly under abrupt climate change and fast-growing global population. The present study aimed to evaluate parental genotypes and their cross combinations under normal and heat stress conditions, exploring their diversity based on dehydration-responsive element-binding 2 gene (DREB, stress tolerance gene in response to abiotic stress) in parental genotypes, and determining gene action controlling yield traits through half-diallel analysis. Six diverse bread wheat genotypes (local and exotic) and their 15 F1 hybrids were evaluated at two different locations under timely and late sowing dates. Sowing date, location, genotype, and their interactions significantly impacted the studied traits; days to heading, chlorophyll content, plant height, grain yield, and its attributes. Cluster analysis classified the parents and their crosses into four groups varying from heat-tolerant to heat-sensitive based on heat tolerance indices. The parental genotypes P2 and P4 were identified as an excellent source of beneficial alleles for earliness and high yielding under heat stress. This was corroborated by DNA sequence analysis of DREB transcription factors. They were the highest homologies for dehydrin gene sequence with heat-tolerant wheat species. The hybrid combinations of P1 × P5, P1 × P6, P2 × P4, and P3 × P5 were detected to be good specific combiners for grain yield and its attributes under heat stress conditions. These designated genotypes could be used in wheat breeding for developing heat-tolerant and climate-resilient cultivars. The non-additive genetic variances were preponderant over additive genetic variances for grain yield and most traits under both sowing dates. The narrow-sense heritability ranged from low to moderate for most traits. Strong positive associations were detected between grain yield and each of chlorophyll content, plant height, number of grains/spike, and thousand-grain weights, which suggest their importance for indirect selection under heat stress, especially in early generations, due to the effortlessness of their measurement.
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DOI: 10.3390/agronomy11081450
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