GRAIN YIELD AND STABILITY OF THE NEW DURUM WHEAT CULTIVAR BANI SUEF 6

The new promising durum wheat cultivar Bani Suef 6 was newly released from Wheat Research Department, Field Crops Research Institute, ARC, Egypt. Bani Suef6 has been selected from CIMMYT materials grown at Sids Agricultural Research Station. Yield evaluation was performed through 31 experiments conducted at different levels of preliminary and advanced yield trials during the three successive growing seasons from 2004/2005 to 2006/2007. The results revealed that the new durum wheat cultivar Bani Suef6 has high yielding ability compared with commercial durum wheat cultivars. Moreover, stability analysis for grain yield showed that Bani Suef 6 has better stability parameters in the three main regions for durum wheat cultivated in Egypt, i.e., Middle Egypt, Upper Egypt and Out Valley. Also, the results of rust diseases reactions cleared that Bani Suef 6 has high resistance to leaf and stem rust diseases. Studies on yield components of Bani Suef 6 revealed that the new cultivar had significantly surpassed the check durum cultivars in number of spikes/m2, number of kernels/spike and higher 1000-kernel weight confirming the contribution of yield components in improving grain yield of the new durum cultivar Bani Suef 6. Studies on number of days to heading revealed that Bani Suef 6 recorded 98.7 days to heading which was earlier than some durum cultivars and almost equal to the average of all cultivars (99.1 days). Similarity, Bani Suef 6 was the earliest in physiological maturity (147.7 days) while other durum checks ranged from 149.0 to 150.8 with an average of 149.7 days. Bani Suef 6 recorded the lowest plant height (101.0 cm vs. 106.0 cm for the average of other cultivars). Physical and chemical analyses of durum wheat grains showed that the new cultivar Bani Suef 6 had a higher score over the average of the other four durum cultivars in hectoliter (83.1 vs. 82), Semolina (77.0 vs. 76.6%), protein (12.9 vs. 12.3%), wet gluten (29.6 vs. 28.4%) and dry gluten (10.8 vs. 10.0%).