Winter wheat has been the main food crop in Ukraine for a long historical period. The history of wheat breeding in Ukraine has been going on since the beginning of the 20th century, namely from such world-famous varieties as Krymka, Kooperatorka, Ukrainka. Wheat breeding centres in Ukraine are located in different climatic zones. One of them is Poltava Breeding Centre, situated on the border of climatic zones Forest-Steppe and Steppe. Since 1972, breeding program has been conducted with the aim of developing new high-yield winter wheat varieties adapted to difficult overwintering conditions, resistant to water deficit and high temperature stress during vegetation period, able to fast spring growth due to the effective use of winter moisture reserves. To estimate winter wheat genotypes for winter hardiness, we have used the method of artificial delay of spring vegetation and different sowing terms. It allowed to select sensitive to the photoperiod genotypes with extended period of vernalization at early breeding stages which provide resistance to winter climatic stresses. To develop the optimal model of winter wheat variety, we have evaluated the productivity level and several morphological parameters of winter wheat plant in our breeding material. We have investigated the importance of such traits as ear linear density and thickness of the second internode for the selection at the early breeding stages. It was shown that the using of indexes for selection of valuable genotypes with further clustering of genotypes into significant groups enables to improve the morphotype of the wheat variety and increases the productivity of plants. In our breeding practice we use attraction index (weight of ear, g / weight of stem, g), microdistribution index (weight of grains per ear, g / weight of ear chaff) and poltavskiy index (weight of grains per ear, g/ apical internode length, sm) and others. The evaluation of agronomic parameters and grain productivity of 1805 developed winter wheat varieties and breeding lines has been carried out for the period from 2001. A significant improvement of parameters such as plant height, grain weight per ear, and the number of grains per ear, harvest index has been obtained.