The inheritance of morphological and agronomic characters in spring wheat

Summary Inheritance of yield and its component (number of ears per plant, number of spikelets per ear, number of kernels per ear, 1000-kernel weight), together with the inheritance of morphological characters (flag leaf length, flag leaf breadth, peduncle length, extrusion length and leaf sheath length) and anthesis date was studied in a 5-parent diallel cross of spring wheat varieties. The diallel analysis of gene actions indicated that a large part of the total genetic variation observed for all the characters studied was in the form of additive genetic effects. The degree of dominance was also determined for each character. Number of ears per plant showed most overdominance, followed by leaf sheath length. Full or nearly full dominance was found for anthesis date, flag leaf length and yield per plant. Other characters showed partial dominance. Correlation coefficients showed that yield per plant, as well as being correlated with the yield components, was also assiciated with flag leaf breadth and leaf sheath length. There was no evidence of genetic barriers to the combining of ideal characters among the varieties of different origin.