Study of Genetic diversity for Agro-morphological and quality characters in diverse aromatic rice germplasm

Abstract

Grain quality has always been an important consideration in rice variety selection and development. Fine grained aromatic rice fetch higher demand than the normal variety in national as well as international market. Indian sub continent has rich diversity of short grain aromatic rice grown in various parts of country while long grain basmati types are confined to the north-western region. Knowledge of genetics of aroma would help in deciding the breeding procedure to evolve the scented varieties. In the present study 81 aromatic rice germplasm, collected from different locations of Chhattisgarh were evaluated for divergence analysis. Observations were recorded on five randomly selected plants for 16 agro-morphological and quality characters. Based on relative magnitude of D² estimates 81 genotypes which were grouped into nine clusters. A wide range of variation was observed in cluster means for all the characters studied. The genotypes from cluster II having  desired mean value for quality characters like hulling, milling and head rice recovery percentage and panicle length; cluster VII having high value for kernel length  and length breadth  ratio and cluster V for earliness and high yield could be incorporated in hybridization for developing high yielding, early maturing with good quality aromatic rice variety.