Joint Selection for High Yield and Low Sensitivity in Winter Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.)

Early generation yield trials of families from a set of winter wheat crosses were grown in three contrasting environments chosen to represent differences in two important macro-environmental variables affecting the wheat, crop in Eastern England. Joint selection for high yield and low sensitivity to these macro-environmental variables over two seasons using the procedure of Brumpton et al. (1977) resulted in a group of genotypes which exhibited a much wider yield range than would have resulted from selecting for yield in each -environment separately. In spite of this, the top performing lines an yield trials grown in each of the environments during the next season exhibited good yield and stability over all three environments, demonstrating the feasibility of such a method for winter wheat breeding.