Agriculture & Horticulture

Biography

Biography: Mukti Ram Poudel

Abstract

Wheat covers the most important food crops in the world and in Nepal in terms of area coverage and productivity. Heat stress and drought stress are the most important limiting abiotic factors for wheat production. The field research was conducted at Bhairahawa, Nepal on December 26, 2021, at the Institute of Agriculture and Animal Science (IAAS), Paklihawa under heat stress and drought conditions to identify traits that highly contribute to grain yield and are suitable for further improvement. The research was conducted in an alpha-lattice design with two replications under heat stress and drought environments. Each replication consists of 5 blocks and 4 plots. The measurement of each plot was 4 m by 2.5 m whereas each plot consists of 10 rows with a spacing of 25 cm between the rows and there was continuous sowing in a row. The correlation of grain yield with each of seven parameters i.e., plant height, number of grains per spike, number of spikelets per spike, spike length, spike weight, test weight and spike per m2 was found to be positive. Yield attributing characters spike per m2 (r = 0.365) showed highly significant correlation with yield; followed by number of spikelets per spike (r = 0.318), plant height (r = 0.317), test weight (r = 0.310), spike length (r = 0.244), spike weight (r = 0.233) and number of grains per spike (r = 0.130). Path coefficient analysis revealed that the magnitude of the positive direct effect on grain yield was the highest for spike per m2 (0.61267) followed by test weight (0.3228), number of spikelets per spike (0.27009), plant height (0.21373), spike length (0.18794) and number of grains per spike (0.1365). It shows that only spike weight contributes for a negative direct effect on grain yield. Hence, it is clear from the study the number of spikes per m2 is the trait that needs to be selected for high yield under heat stress and drought conditions.