Grain Yield Performance Evaluation of Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) Varieties at Welkayt and Tsegedie districts of Western Tigrai, Ethiopia

Wheat (Triticuma estivum L.) is the third most important cereal crops grown after teff and maize. It covers about 81.39% of the arable land in Ethiopia with 17.43% total grain production share. As compared to the wheat yield potential which is above 6t/ha, the current national productivity is too low to feed the dramatically increasing population in the country. Hence, productivity improvement in wheat is critically important. Therefore, this research was initiated to evaluate and identify high-yielding and stable bread wheat varieties. The experiment was conducted at Welkayt and Tsegedie in the 2017 and 2018 main cropping season. 15 released varieties were used in randomized complete block design with three replications. Plant and plot based data were recorded. Combined analysis of variance was computed to detect the presence of genotype x environment interaction. Duncan’s Multiple Range Test (DMRT) at (P ≤ 0.05) level of significance was used to compare varieties performance. Highly significant variation among genotypes, environments and genotype by environment interactions at (P≤0.01) was observed while the genotype by location by year interaction effect was non-significant. Genetic variation among varieties was observed. Sanate (5147.61kg/ha) followed by Ogolcho (4222.95 kg/ha) was the highest yielding variety and Honqolo was the lowest yielding (3530.54kg/ha) variety. Most of the yield contributing traits measured such as plant height (cm), spick length (cm), number of productive tillers, number of seeds per spick and biomass yield (kg/ha) were significant and positively correlated with the grain yield (kg/ha). Sanate was the stable and winning variety in most of the environments tested. Sanate and Ogolcho are recommended to be cultivated in the testing sites and similar agro-ecologies to increase wheat yield productivity.