This investigation wascarried out at El-Gemmeiza Agric. Res. Station, ARC, Egypt, during the three successive seasons, 2006/2007, 2007/2008,and 2008/2009 to study heterosis, heritability in addition to determining the adequacy of genetic model controlling the genetic system for some economic traits.
Six population (P1, P2, F1, F2, Bc1 and Bc2 ) for three crosses were used in this study coming through four bread wheat genotypes. These crosses were PBW343 x Sakha94, Gemmeiza 9 x Sakha line and Sakha 94 x Gemmeiza 9. Analysis of variance showed a significant differences among the studied generations means for all studied traits. Scaling test showed that most studied characters were significant indicating the presence of non- allelic interactions. Dominance gene effects were generally higher in magnitude than additive ones in the three crosses, indicating that dominant genes playing important role in the inheritance of such traits beside the additive one. The hybrid (Gemmeiza 9 x Sakha line) gave a highly significant (aa ), (ad ) and (dd ) with positive values for number of days to heading and number of kernels / spike indicating the importance of gene interactions in the genetic system. On the other hand, the (aa ) negative values obtained for number of spikes / plant and grain yield / plant in the first cross indicate that the materials used in this study have a decreasing alleles expression which makes improving it through selection in the early generations could not be effective.
The second cross gave the highest negative heterotic effect towards earliness for number of days to heading and number of days to maturity with moderate heritability in narrow sense and with a genetic advance being 5.05 and 5.39 day for both characters, respectively. Significant positive heterotic effects relative to better parent were obtained for number of kernels/spike and 100- kernel weight in the first and second cross and number of spikes/ plant, 100- kernel weight and grain yield / plant in the third one.