High yielding wheat lines carrying superior grain and processing quality introgressed from tall traditional cultivars

A set of 25 wheat lines derived from crosses of commercial varieties and advanced breeding lines with traditional tall varieties and other elite quality stocks were evaluated, along with 7 check varieties at 2 locations over 2 years, for their field performance as well as for grain and end-product quality. The pooled analysis of variance for agronomic traits (grain yield, days to heading, plant height, number of grains per spike and 1000-grain weight) revealed significant variation due to main effects (genotypes, locations, years) and interactions among these. Majority of the derived lines possessed yield levels at par with the highest yielding present day cultivars PBW 621 and HD 2967. Promising lines for grain yield and other agronomic traits were BWL 813, BWL 814, BWL 956 and BW 9022. Among the physico-chemical grain quality attributes, a major proportion of derived lines possessed good grain appearance and a very high grain hardness, whereas, a narrow range of variation was observed for test weight, protein content and sedimentation value. With respect to end product quality, BW 8361 was the best line for bread making. The greatest promise of the present set was found for chapati quality wherein the lines BWL 813, BWL 814, BWL 818, BWL 822, BWL 825, BWL 829, BW 9005 and BW 9022 possessed the chapati quality score of more than 8 (out of 10). The present study demonstrated the success achieved in combining high grain yield of present day cultivars with good chapati quality derived from tall traditional varieties, C 273, C 306, C 518 and C 591.