Background: Population growth, especially the unchecked increase in certain regions of the world, coupled with the fact that one-third of the global population relies on wheat for food, has made sustainable production of this strategic crop an imperative. To achieve this long-term goal, we must focus on developing wheat cultivars that, while maintaining high yield, also have the ability to adapt to climate change and the biodiversity of different regions. Yield stability has always been a focus in wheat breeding programs. However, with the intensification of climate change and increasing weather fluctuations, the importance of this trait has grown. As a result, the development of wheat cultivars that can exhibit stable performance under a wide range of environmental conditions and with minimal input requirements has become a primary priority in breeding programs.
Aim: This study was conducted to evaluate and identify the stability of some promising wheat lines. The objective of this study was to select lines that not only had high yield but also exhibited acceptable performance in the face of environmental changes.
Methodology: In this study, grain yield stability of fifteen promising bread wheat lines along with the check cultivar Aftan (a total of 16 genotypes) was evaluated over four years in Gachsaran. The experiment was conducted in a randomized complete block design with four replications each year, and the trait of interest was grain yield.
Results: Different methods were used. Variance analysis results indicated that lines 16, 1, and 15 had the lowest total environmental variance. Based on Shukla's stability variance and coefficient of variation, lines 16, 5, and 2 were identified as stable lines. Lines 13, 14, and 10 were the most unstable lines, while lines 2, 6, and 16 had regression coefficients closest to 1. This indicates the stability of the mean performance of these lines in all experimental environments. Furthermore, according to the four Tenarazo a
