Sixty advance lines of wheat with four standard checks (WH 1021, WH 1124, HD 3059 and DBW 90) were evaluated during Rabi 2020-21 at the research area of Wheat and Barley section, Department of Genetics and Plant Breeding, CCS Haryana Agricultural University, Hisar using multivariate approaches to sort fifteen quantitative and eight qualitative traits into respective categories that describe the share of components to the total variation in the study. The cluster analysis revealed that advance lines and checks were classified into seven clusters, with crosses between members of cluster III and cluster IV producing a preferable combination of morphological and quality traits. The results of PCA depicted that the first seven out of twenty three principal components accounted for 70.66 % of the total variance in the study. The biplot illustrated that traits viz., grain yield per plot, biological yield per plot, flag leaf length, grain weight per spike and number of spikelets per spike had longer lengths on both axes, depicting an ample contribution to both PC1 and PC2. The observed patterns indicated the presence of extensive diversity that may be considerate in choosing parents, promising enough to produce heterotic stress tolerant combinations and to determine their implicit role in genetic enhancement.

Multivariate approaches, Cluster analysis, PCA, Biplot, Genetic diversity

The present study has revealed substantial degrees of variation among the sixty advance lines and four standard checks. The traits viz., biological yield per plot, number of effective tillers per meter, 1000 grain weight, flag leaf length, peduncle length, number of grains per spike, grain weight per spike and hectolitre weight were identified that determine the yield under stress and selection based on which would be efficacious to improve wheat yield. Aforesaid characters have high positive factor loadings and statistically valid differences that contributed more to genetic diversity and were crucial in illustrating the clusters. The grouping of genotypes into seven clusters and reduction of traits to seven major principal components by multivariate approaches would be of practical value to wheat breeders to design experiments for further germplasm collection regarding heat tolerance as well as for hybridization activities to produce heterotic progenies.

Karuna, Y.P.S. Solanki, Vikram Singh, Navreet Kaur Rai, Lalit Kumar and Lovneesh Choudhary (2023). Multivariate Analysis to Screen Heat Tolerant Lines of Bread Wheat based on Morphological and Quality Traits. Biological Forum – An International Journal, 15(11): 100-107.