Genetic divergence in elite genotypes of basmati rice (Oryza sativa L.)

Abstract

Genetic diversity of the parental lines is a good indicator of performance of the progeny. Success through hybridization and SUbsequent selection depends primarily on the selection of parents having high genetic variability for various agronomic traits [1, 2]. In the present study an attempt has been made to find out the degree and nature of genetic divergence among a set of 61 elite basmati rice genotypes with the objective of selecting genetically divergent parental lines for hybridization and development of high yielding basmati varieties. The above genotypes were collected from different parts of India and abroad. These were grown in randomized complete block design in three replications during kharif, 2000 at the Crop Research Centre, G.B.P.U.A.andT., Pantnagar, India. Each genotype was grown in two rows of 3 m length in each replication. All the recommended cultural practices for bas mati rice in the region were followed. Observations were recorded on five randomly selected competitive plants to study the days to 50% flowering, plant height (cm), number of panicles/plant, panicle length (cm), length of flag leaf (cm), width of flag leaf (cm), grain yield/plant (g), number of spike lets/panicle, 1000-grain weight (gm), length of brown rice (mm) and breadth of brown rice (mm). The mean over three replications was used for the statistical analysis. The analysis of genetic divergence was carried out using Mahalanobis's 0 2 statistic. Tocher's method [3] was followed for clustering of genotypes.