Crossability of some bread wheat landraces and improved cultivars from western Himalayas with rye

Summary Crossability of 62 bread wheat accessions (14 landraces from Himachal Pradesh and 48 others) was examined with rye. The 3 rye cultivars did not differ in their relative crossability with 4 of the wheat accessions studied. On the other hand, the wheat cultivars differed greatly among themselves in their crossability with rye. Most of the wheat cultivars showed poor (<10%) crossability. Two of the 14 landraces from Himachal Pradesh were found to be free from the crossability inhibitors as they showed very high (>50%) crossability, whereas none of the other 48 cultivars studied was so.