Applying Genetic Biofortification for Screening of Iranian Bread Wheat Genotypes with High Grain Yield and Nutritional Quality

Nutrient malnutrition in developing countries can be reduced through the genetic biofortification of bread wheat to increase macro- and micronutrient concentrations. This study aimed to identify genotypes with high yield and quality. A total of 298 bread wheat genotypes were grown in two seasons (2018–2019 and 2019–2020) in rain-fed and irrigated environments and were analyzed for nutrient content and agronomical traits. Analysis of variance revealed significant effects of the environment, genotype, and genotype × environment on grain nutrients and yield under irrigated and rain-fed conditions. Broad sense heritability (H 2 ) was greater than 42% for all traits studied, whereas genetic advance as a percent of the mean (GAM) ranged from low (10.79) in GDD (growing degree days) of days to flowering (GDDF) to high (62.80) in GDD of days grain-filling period (GDDG). Drought stress had the greatest effect on grain yield and thousand-grain weight with a reduction of 51.30 and 36.85%, respectively. A low negative correlation was found between grain yield and grain nutrients in both environments. The range of iron (Fe), zinc (Zn), copper (Cu), manganese (Mn), potassium (K), phosphorus (P), magnesium (Mg), calcium (Ca), and grain yield (GY) was, respectively, 30.10–84.65, 21.95–50.70, 2.80–10.30, 27.95–75.05, 2585–4335, 2583.30–4469.4, 194.455–488.445, 660.975–1903.600 mg kg −1 , and 1.146–9.991 ton ha −1 . Yield and quality index (YQI) were able to identify superior genotypes in terms of all nutrients and grain yield. Therefore, the results can be helpful in generating genotypes that have the appropriate level of grain elements and yield, which can lead to the development of genotypes wealthy in nutrients to combat malnutrition.