Vol.:(0123456789) 1 3 Cereal Research Communications https://doi.org/10.1007/s42976-020-00077-2 ORIGINAL PAPER Characterization of wheat landraces and commercial cultivars based on morpho‑phenological and agronomic traits M. A. A. H. Gharib 1  · N. Qabil 2  · A. H. Salem 2  · M. M. A. Ali 2  · H. A. Awaad 2  · E. Mansour 2 Received: 7 May 2020 / Accepted: 2 September 2020 © Akadémiai Kiadó Zrt. 2020 Abstract Wheat landraces are valuable genetic resource for diversity and specifc adaptation to local environmental conditions as well as increasing agronomic traits in breeding programs. Admittedly, this type of genotypes has become more crucial to face the challenges of recent climate change. The aim of this study was to investigate the genetic diversity among Egyptian bread wheat landraces and commercial cultivars based on morpho-phenological and agronomic characters. Thirty-two wheat landraces were collected from eleven Egyptian provinces through collecting trips during 1987 to 1999 and, in addition, three commercial cultivars were evaluated all for ffteen qualitative and quantitative characters. Wide genetic diversity was detected based on evaluated morphological characters was observed among the landraces compared to commercial cultivars. Various landraces exhibited strong glaucosity on fag leaf, culm and ear, which is crucial character especially under dry and hot cul- tivation conditions as Mediterranean region. Furthermore, considerable variation among tested genotypes was demonstrated on the basis of yield-related traits and they were classifed into four groups (A–D) from very high-yielding to low-yielding genotypes. Wheat landraces number 3, 8, 14, 27, 29, 33 and 35 exhibited superiority for earliness, grain yield/plant and its components compared to commercial cultivars (number 18, 19 and 20). The association among morpho-phenological and agronomic characters was studied according to principal component analysis. The evaluated characters were divided into four groups. Certain morphological characters (coleoptiles anthocyanin coloration and awns or scurs at tip of ear length) alongside the phenological characters (days to heading and maturity) and certain agronomic characters (plant height and 1000-grain weight) displayed strong association with grain yield/plant. Furthermore, estimated broad sense heritability was high for plant height, number of grains/spike, 1000-grain weight, days to heading, moderate for days to maturity and grain yield/plant presented and low for number of spikes/plant. Keywords Bread wheat · Landraces · Morpho-phenological and agronomic characters · Genetic diversity · Cluster · Principal component · Heritability Introduction Wheat is the most important cereal crop which is grown on more land area than any other feld crop with a total culti- vation area of 214.29 million hectares and a global produc- tion of 734.05 in 2018 (FAOSTAT 2020). Recent climate change, especially in Mediterranean region, obstructs wheat production, and these changes are expected to increase (Polade et al. 2017; Mansour et al. 2017, 2018a; Migliore et al. 2019). This situation highlights the impor- tance of wheat landraces in breeding programs with the aim of increasing current production to cope the global population growth and face the future challenges of cli- mate change. Accordingly, wheat landraces are valuable genetic resource for diversity and speci fc adaptation to Communicated by M. Molnár-Láng. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s42976-020-00077-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * E. Mansour sayed_mansour_84@yahoo.es 1 Field Crops Research Institute, Agricultural Research Center, Giza 12619, Egypt 2 Agronomy Department, Faculty of Agriculture, Zagazig University, Zagazig 44519, Egypt