Inheritance of important metric traits of wheat in salt stress environments

Development of salinity tolerant genotypes is important for sustaining wheat productivity in suppressive soils. The generation mean analysis of three bread wheat crosses viz., Lok 1 x Raj 3880, Job 666 x Kharchia 65 and Raj 1972 x Kharchia 65 under normal and saline-sodic environment revealed presence of both additive and non-additive gene effects in the inheritance of grain yield per plant and other contributing characters under both the environments. Among the digenic interactions, all three types of epistatic effects were involved in the inheritance of characters studied. Only duplicate gene interaction was present, wherever available. Hence, intermating in early generations and intense selection in later generations could be successfully adopted for breeding wheat varieties having appreciable salinity tolerance level.