Screening of Bread and Durum Wheat Varieties on Yield and Nutritional Quality for Their Tolerance to Zinc Stress

ABSTRACT

Zinc (Zn) deficiency is one of the most prevalent micronutrient deficiencies and is mostly brought on by a diet high in cereal grains with low Zn contents. In order to screen prominent bread (12 varieties) and durum (6 varieties) wheat varieties grown under Zn deficient (control) and sufficient (Zn @ 25 mg kg⁻¹ as soil) condition and a pot experiment was conducted in the screen house of the Department of Soil Science, Chaudhary Charan Singh Haryana Agricultural University, Hisar. In the Zn deficient and sufficient soil, the highest yield was observed in HD-2967 (14.57 & 16.13 g/pot) and PWD-291 (8.68 & 11.70 g/pot) of bread and durum wheat, respectively. In Zn-deficient soil, the highest total protein content and Zn content in grain were observed in DBW-88 (8.17 & 26.50%) and PWD-291 (8.42 & 26.52%) of bread and durum wheat, respectively. All the bread wheat varieties were found to be semi tolerant, i.e. the percentage increase in yield was in the category of 10–25% except WH-52 and RAJ-3765 where increase in yield was more than 25%. The maximum increase in yield was found 28.91% in the WH-542 and the minimum increase (10.70%) in the HD-2967 wheat varieties. For durum wheat, two varieties (WH-912 &WHD-943) were found to be semi tolerant, i.e. the percentage increase in yield was in the category of 10–25%. In conclusion, it was determined that this study is helpful for creating methods for micronutrient biofortification using various wheat varieties in south-central Asia.

KEYWORDS:

• Bread wheat
• durum wheat
• screening
• yield and quality
• zinc

Acknowledgements

We thank all soil laboratory technician of CCSHAU, Hisar (Haryana) for lab analysis and also acknowledge Dr R S Malik (Head of Department) for helpful and insightful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Author contributions

DP, RSM, and CKJ conceived and designed the experiment. DP, N, and RSM contributed to the experimental work and plant growth, while they also performed different analyses and revised the manuscript. DP and CKJ compiled the data and CKJ carried out the statistical analysis of data. DP, PK, and CKJ wrote the paper. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Supplementary data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/00103624.2024.2343356

Additional information

Funding

This research work was supported by the CCS Haryana Agricultural University of Hisar, Haryana, and Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), India.