Agronomic behavior of a new cereal (Tritipyrum: AABBEbEb) compared with modern Triticale and Iranian bread wheat cultivars

The novel salt-tolerant cereal, Tritipyrum, is the third artificially-synthesized crop plant. The agronomic traits and grain yields of 13 primary 6x Tritipyrum lines were evaluated and compared with five modern 6x Triticale lines and nine bread wheat cultivars at Shahid Bahonar University, Kerman, Iran in a randomized complete block design. The Tritipyrum lines had higher grain yields (2.25 gr/plant) than the Triticale lines (1.97 gr/plant) and wheat cultivars (0.84 gr/plant). Although the Tritipyrum lines were late-maturity, they were shorter than the Triticale lines and wheat cultivars and superior in many characters such as penultimate leaf area, flag leaf length, penultimate leaf length and time to milky ripeness. Genotypes were divided into four groups for agronomic and morphological traits and four groups for grain yield by cluster analysis. All clusters showed significant differences for all traits and the first cluster, which comprised of Tritipyrum lines, had a higher mean grain yield than the other clusters. The results of this first large-scale trial indicated the high adaptation of Tritipyrum lines to climatic conditions of Kerman province in south-east Iran.