Morphological characterisation of rice accessions of semi deep water ecology

Abstract

The present investigation was carried out to evaluate the magnitude and nature of genetic variability of 569 rice germplasm accessions with semi deep water ecology, commonly known as asra, at the Regional Agricultural Research Station (RARS), Karimganj, Assam Agricultural University, Assam (India). These accessions were recognised as having flood tolerant characteristics. The first five principal components explained approximately 76.71% of the total variation.Principal component analysis revealed that traits such as number of panicles per hill, spikelet fertility, days to 50% flowering, number of chaffs per panicle, and plant height were the principal discriminatory quantitative traits. It is recommended that the genetic variation prevailing in the assessed asra rice germplasm accessions can be efficiently utilised for the enhancement of the genetic gain. The divergent extreme phenotypes in the accession can also be utilised to develop the mapping population for the identification of quantitative trait loci for flood tolerance. The rice accessions were grouped into three different clusters for both quantitative and qualitative traits. The hybridization among the selected germplasm of different clusters is expected to produce the maximum number of transgressive segregants. This will lead to area expansion with higher productivity of this crop in predominantly flood prone areas.