Breeding for pre-harvest sprouting resistance in bread wheat under rainfed conditions

Pre-harvest sprouting in wheat is the germination of seeds within the spikes when rains occur after or during grain ripening, which occurs commonly in the barani tract of Pakistan. Therefore, 10 cultivars and five advanced lines of spring bread wheat were evaluated for pre-harvest sprouting resistance. After natural rainfall, seeds were immediately collected from the wet spikes and tested for germinating ability. Three different germination tests were applied to hand-threshed seed: (1) spikes threshed on the day of sampling and germination tested immediately, (2) spikes threshed on the day of sampling and germination tested 1 week later, and (3) spikes threshed 1 week after sampling and germination test immediately after threshing. Seeds and spikes kept for 1 week were place on blotting paper at room temperature. Cultivars BARS-09, 09FJ17, Doukkala-12, NARC-09 and Ouassou-20 exhibited higher sprouting resistance while other genotypes were susceptible to pre-harvest sprouting in each of the three tests. A diallel crossing was conducted with six susceptible and two resistant genotypes to assess the genetic behavior of pre-harvest sprouting resistance. The combining ability (CA) demonstrated a higher proportion of additive genetic effects for sprouting resistance, because of higher variance of general and specific CA for both parameters under study. Doukkala-12 and BARS-09 showed increased pre-harvest sprouting resistance in their F-1 descendants.