| A study was carried out to estimate the inheritance, genetic effects of dwarfing gene Rht-8 on plant height and other agronomic traits in common wheat. Three tall elite cultivars of Jinmai 47, Xifeng 20 and Fengchan 3 were crossed with the Rht-8 donor cultivar Jining 13 to produce F1. The F1 was self crossed to obtain F2 seeds. Then the F2 segregation populations were used to estimate the inheritance and genetic effects. For
the plant height, the progeny of Fengchan 3 with Jining 13 attained the highest broad inheritability (74.32%) followed by the progeny of Xifeng 20 and Jinmai 47 with Jining 13 (69.49% and 67.60%, respectively). The effect of dwarfing gene Rht-8 was more prominent in the progeny of Xifeng 20 with Jining 13, with plant height and peduncle length reduced by 30.26% and 19.20%, respectively. By contrast, in the progenies of Fengchan 3 and Jinmai 47 with Jining 13, plant height and peduncle length were reduced by 27.14% and 26.15%, 14.86% and 14.59%, respectively. There were no ignificantly negative effects of dwarfing gene Rht-8 on the other agronomic traits except that it reduced the number of tillers per plant. Correlation analysis indicated that plant height was positively and significantly correlated with number of tillers (0.415, 0.355, and 0.489) and peduncle length (0.408, 0.450, and 0.500), but no significant correlations were observed among plant height and spike length, No. of spikelets per spike, and No. of grains per spike. |