Performance of S2 Winter Barley Progenies from Original and Improved Populations Developed via Recurrent Selection

The effect of recurrent selection procedure for improving grain yield in autogamous cereals was evaluated in a six‐rowed winter barley population. Gain from selection was estimated by field testing 90 random S2 lines from each of the C0, C1 and C2 populations. Response to selection for grain yield was 0.78 t/ha from C0 to C1 and 1.09 t/ha from C1 to C2. Broad‐sense heritability and genotypic variance for grain yield remained high in all cycles which suggests further gain from additional selection cycles. Yield increase was due to a higher number of seeds/m2. Significant differences among mean values were observed for heading date (189 days in C0 and 182 days in C2), whereas no variation was seen for plant height and 1000‐kernel weight. The proposed recurrent selection procedure appears effective to improve the population and to extract superior genotypes for varietal development. Copyright © 1992, Wiley Blackwell. All rights reserved