Principal component analysis of yield related component of tropical wheat varieties grown under different irrigation regimes in Bauchi State, Nigeria.

Abstract

Wheat is a globally cereal crop with a lot of utilities and nutritional values. The production of wheat is seriously reduced by water stress. In Nigeria, wheat is produced mostly using irrigation system in the Northern parts of the country, as such there is a need to investigate the optimum irrigation regime of wheat crop and also study the response of the crop to water stress with the goal of determining the main components for yield contributing traits. The study was carried out in Bauchi, Nigeria's savannah zone, during the 2018/2019 and 2019/2020 dry farming seasons. Ten tropical wheat varieties were grown in the field using a split plot design with three replications under three irrigation watering regimes. The analysis of variance revealed significant differences in all the thirteen traits observed among the varieties. There were mean differences (p<0.05) between the varieties. The principal component analysis (PCA) results revealed that the first five principal components (PC) explained over 98% of the total variability. The number of grains per spike, spike length, and thousand grain weight were all positively related to grain yield and had a high PC 1 score, indicating high variation. The highest yielders were KAUZ-9, ATTILA-7 and TEVEE'S, while the lowest was SERI-82. It is recommended that when screening wheat lines in tropical areas, thousand grain weight, number of grains per spike, and spike length should be emphasized, as well as the correlation between the thirteen traits.