Evaluation of rice germplasm under jhum cultivation in North East India and breeding for Aluminium tolerance

Abstract

In North Eastern (NE) region, Aluminium (Al) toxicity is a major problem due to acidic soils. Shifting (Jhum) cultivation of rice is a primitive mode of agriculture prevailing in the hills of the NE region. The present study was carried out to screen a set of 67 genotypes for agronomic traits, yield and characters related to Al tolerance. The components of variability revealed high magnitude and highly heritable nature of variation. Heritability was found high for ear bearing tillers, panicle length and yield per ha. Genetic advance over mean was also high for all the traits except for days to 50% flowering. Significant correlations were observed for traits evaluated in this study. The clustering pattern as revealed by dendrogram, based on average distance classified the accessions into three groups. Principal component analysis revealed that the first three most informative components accounted for 56% of the variance. Several high performing genotypes like, Lengja and Koyabo were identified suitable for acidic soil conditions of Jhum areas.