TURKISH JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURE AND FORESTRY, vol.33, no.6, pp.525-535, 2009 (SCI-Expanded)
Very little information exists on the relative genetic architecture of the grain physical properties of wheat. The physical properties of grain have a direct or indirect influence on the milling and baking quality of wheat. Therefore, understanding the inheritance of grain physical properties will be useful to improve varieties with better quality Five bread wheat cultivars were crossed in order to evaluate the mode of inheritance and combining ability and the correlation of the grain's physical properties. Analysis of variance for combining ability showed that both additive and non-additive gene actions were involved in controlling most of the traits. Magnitudes of general combining ability (GCA) for all features except grain weight (GW) and grain height (GH) were higher than those of specific combining ability (SCA) The effect of general combining ability was more prominent for 8 out of 10 traits in accordance with ratio of GCA:SCA. Path coefficient analysis showed that grain width (GWI), number of grains per spike (GS), and grain height (GH) had the highest significant direct and indirect effect on most of the other features. The results obtained from this study might be helpful for wheat breeders trying to develop new varieties with better grain features to improve the milling and baking quality of wheat.