Studies on Selection Indices for Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) Improvement Using Interrelationship and Path Analysis under Sub-Tropical Conditions of Indore Region

In Rabi 2022–2023 at Central Research Farm, Oriental University Indore, Madhya Pradesh, twenty varieties of wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) were used in this investigation, which was conducted using an RBD design with three replications. Thirteen quantitative characters were used to record data in order to study the relationships and path analysis between the characters. Correlation studies showed that biomass yield (0.891**, 0.511**), number of grains per spike (0.844**, 0.538**), and thousand seed weight (0.544**, 0.359**) exhibited significant positive correlation with grain yield at both genotypic and phenotypic level. Based on mean performance, JW 3020 (343.687 g) displayed the highest grain yield per running meter. At both the genotypic and phenotypic levels, the characters such as days to maturity (-0.473**, -0.609**) showed a negative correlation with grain yield per running meter. Path analysis showed that characters such as days to maturity (-0.005, -0.0055) had negative direct effects on grain yield per running meter at both phenotypic and genotypic levels, and characters like number of grains per spike (0.835, 0.035), biomass yield (0.71, 0.765), and harvest index (0.089, 0.598) had direct positive effects on grain yield per running meter at both genotypic and phenotypic levels.