Research of the variability of some morpho-physiological and quality traits in winter wheat collection from agricultural research and development station Turda.

Evaluation of morpho-physiological and quality traits of winter wheat from the ARDS Turda collection is a priority in wheat breeding programs, especially to identify useful germplasm which may be used in the crosses to obtain a large range of genetic diversity for desired traits. The main purpose of this research is to study the morpho-physiological traits that may have an influence on winter wheat quality. For this study, 1041 cultivars of common winter wheat of different origin and representing a large range of agronomic types were grown in the years 2006 and 2008 at Agricultural Research and Development Station (ARDS) Turda in the collection in screening nursery. These cultivars were sown on plots, equal in their size, without replications. The local check variety Arieşan was included from 10 to 10 plots, which resulted in 115 individual plots. Arieşan is an early and productive variety with good protein and gluten content. The morpho-physiological traits analysed in the years 2006 and 2008 were: biological yield, number of grain/spike, grain weight/spike, 1000 grain weight, test weight, harvest index (HI), protein content, nitrogen use efficiency (NUE), wet gluten content and falling number. The protein content is an important factor in breadmaking quality. For grain protein content we obtained a range of variability between 9.47 and 16.7%. Statistical analyses were made for the 1041 genotypes in winter wheat collection compared with the 115 plots of check variety Ariesan. Correlation coefficients (r) were calculated in order to provide a measure of the degree of association for the above mentioned traits. The results indicate a high variability between the 1041 cultivars in the common winter wheat collection for all studied characters. Coefficients of variation were higher in the case of common wheat collection as compared with the check variety Arieşan, for all characters studied, revealing the expression of large genetic variability for qualitative characters in the studied collection. The correlation coefficients indicated that there was a significant and complex relationship between the analyzed characters. The correlation coefficient between protein content and wet gluten content was 0.72. Protein content is positively correlated with heading date and negatively correlated with harvest index. This study allowed the identification of some genotypes with high protein content, associated with other important agronomical traits.