Evaluation of growth, yield, relative performance and heat susceptibility of eight wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) genotypes grown under heat stress

Eight spring wheat cultivars were evaluated under three heat stress conditions (early, late and very late) in order to identify suitable cultivars to develop heattolerant genotypes resistant to future global warming. Results from the study indicate that stress did not negatively affect flag leaf area in ‘Prodip’ and ‘Sufi’, flag leaf dry matter partitioning in ‘Prodip’, ‘BARI Gom-26’ and ‘Shatabdi’, above-ground dry matter partitioning in ‘Shatabdi’ and ‘BARI Gom-26’, seedling emergence in ‘Sufi’ and ‘BARI Gom-26’, or tiller production in ‘Sufi’ and ‘BARI Gom-26’. With respect to lower yield reduction, relative performance and heat susceptibility index (HSI), ‘Sufi’ was highly heat stress-tolerant, followed by ‘BARI Gom-26’ and ‘Shatabdi’. On the basis of HSI values in early heat stress and extremely late heat stress (corresponding to early and extremely late sowing), ‘BARI Gom-26’ (HSI=0.10, 0.65) and ‘Shatabdi’ (0.22, 0.62) were highly tolerant to early heat stress and moderately tolerant to extremely late heat stress while ‘Sufi’ was highly tolerant (0.35) to extremely late heat stress and moderately tolerant (0.51) to early heat stress. All other genotypes were susceptible to heat stress, among which ‘Gourab’ (2.19, 1.46) was the most susceptible followed by ‘Sourav’ (1.19, 1.42), ‘Prodip’ (1.03, 1.23), ‘BARIGom-25’ (1.61, 0.89) and ‘Bijoy’ (1.04, 1.28). Thus, ‘BARIGom-26’, ‘Shatabdi’ and ‘Sufi’ have the greatest potential to be used as high-yielding wheat genotypes under warm to hot environments and could be used in a breeding programme to develop heat-tolerant wheat.