East Ethiopia

Sixty four bread wheat genotypes were tested in a simple lattice design at Kulumsa Agricultural Research Center during 2014/15 main cropping seasonto estimate the extent of genetic variability. The genotypes showed significant variation for all the traitsstudied except for biomass yield ha-1 and relatively wide range of the mean values for most of the characters indicated the existence of variations among the tested genotypes.Moderate PCV and GCV were recorded for 1000 kernel weight, grain yield, harvest index, number of grains spike-1 and number of productive tiller. High heritability values were observed for days to heading, days to maturity, grain filling period, 1000 kernel weight, number of spikelet spike-1, spike length and plant height. Moderate PCV and GCV were recorded for 1000 kernel weight, grain yield, harvest index, number of grains spike-1 and number of productive tiller. Among the characters 1000 kernel weight showed high values of genetic gain whereas days to maturity, grain yield, harvest index, productive tillers and number of grains plant-1 had moderate values of genetic advance as percent of mean (GAM). The D 2 analysis showed that the 64 genotypes were clustered into nine clusters. Maximum inter cluster distance was observed between cluster I and IX (D 2 =5112.1), followed by that between clusters III and IX (D 2 =4694.4) and VIII and IX (