European Journal of Zoological Research
Abstract
Author(s): Farzaneh Pordel-Maragheh
In order to investigate the relationship between traits and analysis to causal relationships in winter wheat, an
experiment was conducted on 9 promising wheat lines and Shahriar cultivars (control) in a randomized complete
block design with two replications at Agriculture and Natural Resources Research Station of Ardabil in 2012. The
statistical analysis of the survey included 14 important traits such as total number of tillers, number of fertile tillers,
number of infertile tillers, spike length, grain weight per spike, plant height, biomass, peduncle length, peduncle
weight, seed weight, days to flowering, days to maturity, harvest index and grain yield. Results of variance analysis
showed that there are significant differences between 10 wheat genotype in terms the number of fertile tiller, number
of spike per square meter, grain weight per spike, peduncle weight, days to flowering, days to maturity, harvest
index, grain yield (at 1% level), biomass and seed weight (at 5% level), indicates that there is variation among the
genotypes studied. Correlation coefficients indicated that the peduncle elongation and reduction in the number of
infertile tillers will have a positive effect on performance. The high correlation between grain yield and number of
grains per spike indicates that this attribute can also be a good measure for the selection of high yielding varieties.
Grain yield had the highest correlation with the length of the spike (0.903) between traits. Multiple stepwise
regression analysis for the grain yield showed that characteristics such as infertile tillers and peduncle length
remained in the model and about 92% of the variations are controlled by these traits. The significant coefficient in
the regression equation show effective traits in increasing the grain yield. So that the peduncle length increase and
reduction in the number of infertile tillers will have a positive impact on performance. Path analysis of remained
characters in the regression model showed that peduncle length had the most direct effect (0.672) with grain yield
and infertile tiller had the negative and direct impact on grain yield (-0.193). Also the number of infertile tillers had
more indirect effect through peduncle length than the indirect effect length of peduncle through the number of
infertile tillers on the yield. So, the most important traits were identified as selection criteria to improve the yield
which included infertile tillers and peduncle length.
