Study of heat susceptibility indices for yield and its attributes in barley (Hordeum vulgare L.)

Abstract

The present experiment was undertaken to understand the impact of high temperature on yield and its attributing traits and to select heat stress tolerant parents and cross combinations for future breeding programme. To fulfill the requirement of this objective, the experiment was conducted in two environments i.e. normal and heat stress, with 10 diverse genotypes, their 45 F1’s and F2’s. In the present study, the Heat Susceptibility Index value of parents and crosses for different quantitative characters was calculated and genotypes were classified in to four different categories i.e. highly heat tolerant, heat tolerant, moderately heat tolerant and heat susceptible. From the result of heat susceptibility index (HSI), it could be visualized that the parents RD-2035, RD-2052 and RD-2508 were found most desirable for most of the characters under heat stress environment. Among the crosses, RD-2052XRD-2503, RD-2052XRD-2786, RD-2503XRD-2794, RD-2503XRD-2592, RD-2503XRD-2715, RD-2794XRD-2660 and RD-2592XRD-2508 were found most suitable as they attained top ranks for more than two yield contributing characters and could be utilized as a promising breeding material for the development of new set of thermal/heat stress tolerant barley varieties.