Study of agronomic characteristics of doubled haploid lines and their derivative breeding lines in triticale (X Triticosecale Wittmack)

To evaluate agronomic characteristics in 18 triticale lines including nine doubled haploid (DH) and nine derivative F6 breeding lines, a field experiment was conducted at research field station, College of Agriculture, Isfahan University of Technology, Lavark, Najaf Abad, Isfahan, Iran, in 2007 growing season–using a randomized complete block design with four replications. Analysis of variance revealed significant differences among genotypes for most of the traits. The DH and F6 breeeding lines significantly differed for most of the traits with the exception of number of spike m-2 and grain weight spike-1. Significant and positive correlations between grain yield with number of spike m-2 (0.7**), number of grain spike-1 (0.5**), grain weight spike-1 (0.5**), 1000 grain weight (0.4**), biological yield (0.8**) and harvest index (0.6**) were observed. The highest and lowest broad sense heritability of 99.5% were estimated for plant height and 61% for grain yield, respectively. The results of path analysis on the remaining traits in the step wise regression model showed that grain weight spike-1 had the highest positive direct effect on grain yield. In conclusion, DH lines were superior to F6 breeding lines for agroonmic traits. It is also concluded that grain weight spike-1and number of spike m-2 can be used as selection criteria in breeding programs for development of high yielding triticale cultivars.