Vol. 11, Special Issue 9 (2022)

Author(s):
Aravind Balaji A, Arumugam Pillai M, Shoba D, Aiyanathan EA, Sathwik B, Rapaka Percy VS, Madhuri M, Bharath Kumar M, Dileep Kumar GD, Kasarla Chaithanya and R Abdul Fiyaz

Abstract:
Rice is the predominantly consumed food across the globe and there is an urgent need to increase its production and productivity to feed the increasing population. Landraces and germplasm harbor tremendous amount of genetic variation that can be utilized to develop better varieties. Keeping this in view the current work has been carried out in 48 germplasm lines to estimate genetic variability, heritability, genetic advance and correlation between associated traits at the ICAR-Indian Institute of Rice Research (ICAR-IIRR) during Rabi 2021-2022. Six of the ten traits showed high values of PCV and GCV viz. number of productive tillers, panicle weight, number of filled grains, test weight and single plant yield revealing lesser influence of environment on these traits. Plant height and panicle length had moderate GCV and PCV, number of tillers had high PCV and moderate GCV while days to 50% flowering had low GCV and PCV. Values of Heritability (except for number of tillers and single plant yield) and genetic advance as percent of mean were high for all the traits indicating that selection would be effective and rewarding. Days to 50% flowering had high positive correlation with number of tillers. Single plant yield most strongly correlated with panicle weight followed by number of filled grains per panicle, number of productive tillers and test weight indicating that yield can be improved by selection for the above associated traits. The knowledge of the above estimates will be useful to fully exploit the potential genetic variation available in the population.