Agro-morphological Variability of Upland Rice Hill Landraces Evaluated at Central Terai Region of Nepal

Abstract

Landraces are the major sources for creating variation in crops which offer enormous opportunity to plant breeders for development of new cultivars through selection. Fifteen upland rice landraces were considered in this study to determine the genetic variation based on phenotypic evaluation of traits. The study was carried out in two wet season during 2015 and 2016 in randomized complete block design with three replications. The genotypes were evaluated for phenotypic characters such as days to heading, days to maturity, plant height, panicle length, number of filled grains, tillers/m2, thousand grain weight and grain yield. The statistical analysis revealed highly significant difference (P<0.001) for all the traits except panicle length, filled grains and grain yield. Similarly, year effect was highly significant (P≤0.001) for majority of traits except for plant height and panicle length. The genotype x year interaction was found significant (P<0.01) for days to heading and plant height (P<0.05). The result demonstrated that the genotype UR D010 found earliest in heading (64 days) and maturity (94 days). Although statistically nonsignificant,two genotypes UR D010 (5.23 t ha-1) and UR D002 (5.21 t ha-1) were at par with check variety Ghaiya-1(5.36 t ha-1)
in grain yield respectively. The genotypes UR D009 and UR D006 possessed fine grain (17.3 g) and (17.8 g) respectively according to 1000 grain weight basis. The genotype UR D005 has the longest panicle (25.8 cm) followed by UR D008 with panicle length (25.5cm). It is obvious from the study that the genotypes were greatly differed among each other for various morphological traits. The findings of this study suggested us to further investigation of genotypes to identify best suited genotype to utilize for varietal improvement programs.