CORRELATION AND PATH COEFFICIENT ANALYSIS OF ELITE SPRING WHEAT LINES DEVELOPED FOR HIGH TEMPERATURE TOLERANCE

Abstract
A set of fifty bread wheat genotypes that comprised of 49 high temperature tolerant lines from CIMMYT and a local check Gautam were evaluated with an objective to study the character association between yield and yield related components at the research farm of Agriculture and Forestry University, Rampur during the wheat season 2016/2017 under late sown condition. The experiment was laid out following Alpha Lattice design with two replications. Grain yield has positive and significant correlations with biomass yield, harvest index, thousand kernel weight, plant height, SPAD1 flag leaf area, SPAD1 and number of grain per spike. Negative and significant correlations were observed between grain yield with days to flowering, days to heading and days to booting. Path analysis revealed that biomass weight has maximum positive direct effect on grain yield followed by harvest index, days to booting, days to flowering, SPAD3, root angle of basket condition, number of root, number of grains per spike, and number of tiller per meter square. On the other hand, days to booting, flag leaf area, physiological maturity, SPAD1, SPAD2, root length, days to flag leaf senescence, plant height, ctd2, and thousand kernel weight showed the negative direct effect on grain yield.