NAMES, PEDIGREES, ORIGINS, AND ADAPTATION - IBSA

Tables 1 and 2 provide information on names, abbreviations, synonyms,pedigrees, origins, releasing institutions and research centres, and years/periods of release of hexaploid and tetraploid wheats, respectively, during thesubsistence agriculture era. This information is based largely on Murty (1958),Pal (1966), and Kohli (1968). Similar information for cultivars of the secondera is given in Tables 3, 4, and 5, which is based mainly on the official list ofwheat cultivars (Tanwar and Singh 1985), supplemented with that given byRao (1978), Agrawal (1986), various wheat research centres, and reported inthe AICWIP annual reports of all India coordinated varietal trials,1970-71 to1992-93. For a number ofvarieties listed in Tables 1 and 2, the year of releaseis not readily available in the publications referred to above. To provide someidea about the period ofdevelopment ofthese cultivars, the approximate periodof release/seed distribution has been indicated. It may however be noted thatrelease of an improved variety during first era was rather a local affair andprovincial in character.The official system ofvariety testing, release and notification of new varietiesin India came into being in the 1960s. The Central Variety Release Committee(CVRC) and State Variety Release Committees (SVRC) were established. TheAll India Coordinated Wheat Improvement Project (AICWIP) was establishedunder the aegis of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research in 1961 todevelop a programme of coordinated wheat research for the country. ThisProject took several significant steps, some of which were to define wheatagroclimatic zones, identify major production conditions, and to initiateevaluation of newly 'developed breeders' lines, through its net work ofinter-discliplinary and multilocation testing (see Tables 17 and 18 for details).The data generated under AICWIP have since formed the basis ofidentificationof new improved lines with wider adaptation and their subsequent release bythe CVRC at zonal or national level.The names of cultivars given in Tables 3 and 4 are the same as those in theofficial records. In a majority of cases, the cultivar name is the same as that ofthe breeding line, which is assigned at the time of its inclusion in the all Indiacoordinated varietal trials. In some cases, cultivars have been given popularnames, but they continue to be known by the original line number or othersynonyms. Both line number and synonyms have, therefore, also been includedto help researchers to identify the material. However, information on pedigreeand adaptatiop of presented against cultivar name. Details of variousorganizations, wheat research centres andthe prefixes used against numbersby these research centres are set out in Tables 19 to 21.Information on adaptation of cultivars, though of local significance, has beenincluded in Tables 3 and 4 for cultivars ofthe second era. This information mayprove useful to researchers in the Indian subcontinent and other regions withsimilar agro-climatic conditions. These cultivars have been released in thecountry for specific ecosystems at the Zonal or State level. Interestingly, some2