Genetic Diversity Studies in Popular Rice (Oryza Sativa L.) Varieties of India

Abstract

The success of any breeding programme depends upon the selection of suitable parents for developing elite recombinants. The eighty seven popular rice varieties of India were grouped into ten clusters using Mahalanobis D 2 statistics which revealed the presence of substantial diversity among the genotypes. The characters viz., kernel length, protein content, days to 50 per cent flowering, 100-grain weight, kernel breadth, single plant yield, plant height, number of grains per panicle and L/B ratio contributed maximum towards divergence. Maximum intra cluster distance was observed in cluster X. Cluster II showed maximum inter cluster distance with cluster IX. Most of the long slender grain types are included in the cluster X, which is having highest desirable mean values for most of the characters. The superior performing genotypes from the divergent clusters II, III, VI, VIII, IX and X can be used as parents to exploit maximum heterosis for improving productivity along with fine grain quality.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.29321/MAJ.10.100115

Pages

468 - 470

Creative Commons

Copyright

© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Madras Agricultural Students' Union in Madras Agricultural Journal (MAJ). This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited by the user.

Keywords