Inheritance of leaf rust resistance in wheat

Abstract

Six genetic population viz., P₁, P₂, F₁, F₂, B₁ and B₂ of eight crosses involving nine parents were evaluated to estimate the nature and magnitude of gene action for the inheritance of resistance to leaf rust, Puccinia recondita Rob. Ex. Desm. f. sp. tritici, during Rabi 2004-05. The results on gene action and mean analysis showed that all the three types of gene actions i.e. additive, dominance and epistatic were responsible in varying proportions for all the crosses. Among the epistatic interaction, dominance x dominance was more important followed by additive x dominance effect. The magnitude of dominance component was higher than additive component. It was suggested that reciprocal recurrent selection or mass selection with recurrent random mating might be most efficient for utilization of all three types of gene effects for the development of high leaf rust resistance genotypes of wheat.