| Fourteen colored wheat germplasms and two white wheat cultivars(control) were used to investigate the performance of major agronomic traits and nutritional qualities, and to evaluate by principal component analysis for excellent colored wheat germplasm. The results showed that Ziyou 5 had excellent effective tillering, number of spikes, yield, biomass and harvest index; Xihei 88 had good performance in spike length, kernel number and thousand-kernels weight. The nutritional quality of Xihei 88, Ziyou 11, Yanghei 1, Ziyou 5, Lingheimai 2, and Xihei-2 was better than that of the control. High variation coefficients were observed for effective tillering, spike length, yield, dough development time, stability time, peak viscosity and mineral nutrient elements of colored wheat, suggesting wide scope for improvement. Correlation analysis showed that kernel number per spike, 1 000-grain weight and number of panicles were significantly positively correlated with grain yield(P<0.01), and crude protein was significantly positively correlated with wet gluten, water absorption, dough development time and stability time(P<0.01). SDS-PAGE was used for HMW-GS identification. Eight subunit types(Null, 1, 2*, 7+8, 7+9, 14+15, 2+12, 5+10) and seven subunit combinations were detected. Among the colored wheat, score of seven germplasm was up to 10, higher than that of white-grained wheat. Rare and high-quality subunits 14+15 was found in Xinongcaimai 007 and Yanghei 1. A total of five principal components were extracted from 18 main agronomic traits and nutritional quality by principal component analysis, and the cumulative contribution rate was 81.70%. The composite scores indicated that Xihei 88, Ziyou 11, and Xinongcaimai 3 had excellent overall performance, with high utilization value in agronomic traits and nutritional quality, which could be applied in colored wheat improvement. |