Study of grain yield and several morphological traits diversity in some durum wheat genotypes

Durum wheat has been subjected to intense cultivation due to its economic importance and it occupies second place after bread wheat in many regions. The experiment was organized in a randomized complete block design with four replications using thirteen newly improved durum wheat genotypes and one check cultivar as Dehdasht. Several traits including plant height, peduncle length, spike length, growth vigority, agronomic score, days to heading, days to physiological maturity, thousand kernel weight, test weight and grain yield were measured. Significant differences were observed for all the traits among durum wheat genotypes indicating considerable amount of variation. The estimates of the coefficient of variation were high for spike length and growth vigority. The number of days to heading ranged from 106.5 (G1 and G3) to 111.8 (G10) while G13 had the longest (146.0) and G2 (142.5) and G11 (142.3) had the shortest days to physiological maturity. The test weight ranged from 378.5 in G10 to 397.0 in G8, but the check cultivar indicated the highest thousand kernel weight (44.0 g). According to grain yield, G3 had the maximum yield (6720 kg ha-1) and G7 had the minimum yield (5047 kg ha-1). The high yielding genotypes had high values for growth vigority, spike length, peduncle length, agronomic score and thousand kernel weight. The information on the agro-morphological traits of the studied durum wheat genotypes will be helpful to plant breeders in constructing their breeding materials and implementing selection strategies.