Crosses were made involving the cultivars: BH-1146, tall and aluminum tolerant, IAC-24, semidwarf and aluminum tolerant and Anahuac, semidwarf and aluminum sensitive. Parents, F1's, F2's and reciprocal backcrosses were tested for their seedling reaction to 6mg/l of Al3+ in nutrient solution, in laboratory condition, and evaluated for grain yield and plant height at maturity in an experiment using pots, under a screen house in 1988 conditions at Experimental Center of Campinas, State of São Paulo, Brazil. Narrow sense heritabilities estimates were moderate to high for plant height (0.432-0.799) and for aluminum tolerance (0.425-0.922) and low for grain yield (0.037-0.195). Phenotypic correlations between grain yield and plant height were positive and significant for all populations under study. Phenotypic correlations between grain yield and aluminum tolerance were non significant (except for the population BH-1146 x IAC-24). The phenotypic correlation between plant height and aluminum tolerance was only positive and significant for the population BH-1146 x IAC-24. Results suggest it would be possible to select semidwarf plants, with aluminum tolerance and with high yield potential if large segregating populations were used to identify desired genotypes originated from eventual recombinations.
bread wheat; heritability; plant height; grain yield; aluminum toxicity; tolerance