Wheat is the world leading cereal crop of nearly 37% of the world population. NIFA wheat breeding program reflects to develop potential varieties for enhancing wheat productivity in general and particularly in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) as the crop is the main staple food of Pakistan and important strategic agricultural commodity. The earlier irrigated and rainfed varieties released so far by this group played a pivotal role for increasing wheat production in the province. The scientists being aware of the fact that in 2050, the 334.68 million country populations will need about 37.14 million tons of wheat grain and the country must meet these requirements for its food security. Hence, they are in a continuous struggle to break the yield barriers in order to make the country self-sufficient in wheat production. In KP wheat is grown on 0.756 million hectares and the production is 1.208 million tons as against the requirement of 3.0 million tons. The current average yield of 1.56 tons per hectare in the province is very low. The low per acre yield can be attributed to a number of biophysical / socio-economic constraints and emergence of high disease pressure to the crop, in particular, yellow rust. Therefore, NIFA Wheat improvement group is actively involved in continuous efforts to develop and release new genetically improved high yielding, disease resistant and widely adaptable varieties for irrigated and rainfed areas to stabilize and increase wheat production in the province.

Wheat:

a. Irrigated Area:

•   Bakhtawar (1993)
•   Fakhr-e-Sarhad (1998)
•   NIFA Batoor (2008)
•   NIFA Aman (2017)
•   NIFA Nijat (2023)

b. Rainfed Area:

•   Tatara (1996)
•   Takbeer (2000)
•   NIFA Barsat (2010)
•   NIFA Lalma (2013)
•   NIFA Insaf (2015)
•   NIFA Awaz-2019
•   Fakhr NIFA-2023

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