Yield performance and stability of durum wheat varieties in northwestern Ethiopia

A key challenge for plant breeders is to achieve high durum wheat yield in Ethiopia across various locations while minimizing environmental influences. Fourteen varieties were tested using atriplicate RCBD design.The experiment was conducted over two consecutive main cropping seasons (2020-2021) at three different locations: Felege Birhan, Sebshengo, and Felege Selam Farmers Training Center, consisting a total of six test environments.The study aimed to evaluate the yield performance and stability of durum wheat varieties using various stability models in northwestern Ethiopia to provide advanced information to breeders and the local farming community. Data was collected for fifteen key traits and analyzed using modern statistical approaches. The combined analysis of variance exhibited notable variances (p < 0.001) in traits including grain yield, biomass yield, and hectoliter weight due to genotype, environment, and their interaction.The AMMI biplot analysis indicated that the first two interaction principal component axes, IPC1 and IPC2, together explaining a total of 80.83% of the GEI variance. AMMI efficiently distingushes genotypes G10, G14, G13 that display low IPCA scores positioned near the origin, indicating high yielding and stable across all studied environments.GGE displayed six test environments were grouped into two mega environments where E4, followed by E1 and E3, is the most ideal for both discriminating and representing the grain yield performance of durum wheat genotypes. Genotypes G1, G9, G12 and G11 were the vertex genotypes and G1 and G11 were most strongly associated with specific environments. Genotype G10, G5, G2 and G12 demonstrated high yield performance and stability across environments. In the study, Mean vs stability plot showed genotypes G7, G4, G8, G2, G10 are located on the right side and close to ordinary line had excellent yield performance and wonderful stability.The Multi-trait stability analysis result exhibited genotypes G1, G8, G12, G5 had stable and superior yield performance across diverse test environments by integrating multiple agronomic and stability traits.Using all stability evaluation methods genotype G10 was high yield performance and stable across test environments. G1, G8 were selected as stable for considering multiple triats to a specific environment. A significant positive relationship was observed between grain yield ton/ha with important traits, this shows that these traits indirectly contribute significantly to increasing the grain yield of durum wheat.The selected genotype (G10) can serve as a reference for future durum wheat improvement studies and cultivar selection for wide adaptation.The findings provide valuable information to farmers in choosing stable and high-yielding varieties. This contributes to ensuring food security in Ethiopia by developing climate-resilient, stress-tolerant, and superior genotypes, which should be further assessed in on-farm trials.