Evaluating Adaptions of Soft Red Winter Wheat in Eastern Region of USA

Identification of winter wheat cultivars that are highly adapted to a wide range of environmental conditions is one of the most important wheat research objectives. Multi-environment crop trials under diverse environments is a commonly used practice to evaluate yield stability. For example, uniform eastern and southern red soft winter wheat nursery trials are conducted annually. However, locations and cultivars may vary from year to year and may cause yield stability analysis to be statistically challenging. In this study, we evaluated cultivars that were widely adapted to eastern production areas and those that were specifically adapted to other environments. We used linear mixed approaches to detect genotype-by-environment interaction effects for yield and heading date based on uniform eastern soft red winter wheat yield trial data from four growing seasons (2012/2013 to 2015/2016). Differences in yield responses and cultivar adaptation will be reported.