Singling Out Stable Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) Genotypes through Genotype-Environment Interaction in Northern Ethiopia

A field trial was conducted using a triple lattice design with 25 bread wheat genotypes in order to identify high yielding stable wheat genotypes than the standard checks using stability analysis in six environments of Northern Ethiopia.In the current study, genotype, environment and genotype-environment interaction (G x E interaction) had significant effects on grain yield. The total sum of squares (TSS) split showed that the environmental effect was a predominant source of variation (76.13%), followed by genotype-environment interaction (G x E interaction) (16.17%) and genotypes (7.7%). AMMI analysis showed that the first two principal component axes (IPCA1 and IPCA2) of the interaction were highly significant (p<0.01) and explained 42.7 and 20.1% of the total variation, respectively. AMMI and GGE bi-plot method analyzes confirmed G 16 as an ideal genotype, whereas G 8 and G 22 are desirable genotypes; therefore, these three genotypes are recommended for verification experiments. The analysis of variance showed that genotype ETBW8480 yielded 10.2% more than the standard check Kingbird and 10.5% more than Kakaba. The GGE bi-plot analysis revealed that E-1 is the best environment (both discriminative and representative environments), which provides a useful test bed for selecting generally adapted genotypes.