Multivariate Analysis of Phenotypic Diversity of Landraces of Rice of West Bengal

Aims: The objectives of this study were to characterize, evaluate and work out the interrelationship among the agro-morphological traits with a view to exploiting them directly in the field (if possible) and forming a base for using these landraces in breeding program.

Study Design: A field experiment was done with fifty-one landraces of rice evaluated for 18 agro-morphological traits.

Place and Duration of Study: At the Research Farm of Zonal Adaptive Research Station Krishnagar, Nadia, West Bengal, India during the kharif season of 2008, 2009 and 2010.

Methodology: The experiment was set out in a randomized complete-block design with two replications to determine the nature and magnitude of the variability among the genetic materials, and the intensity of relationships among the traits using multivariate tools.

Results: The study analyzed the diversity of phenotypic traits of the landraces of rice. The analysis of variance found significant variability in eighteen quantitative traits used in distance analysis. All the traits except ligule length, culm length, number of grains panicle-1 and number of primary branches panicle-1 exhibited positive and significant correlation coefficients with kernel weight. Leaf length was positively and significantly correlated with leaf breadth (r=0.760), plant height (r=0.309) culm length (r=0.352); plant height showed similar associationship with flag leaf angle (r = 0.337), culm diameter (r=0.688), culm number (r=0.706) and panicle length(r=0.654). Principal component analysis revealed that six quantitative characters viz., leaf length, culm number, culm diameter, number of grains panicle-1, grain length/breadth ratio and grain length significantly influenced the variation in these cultivars. Cluster analysis permitted the separation of landraces into ten major clusters from diverse geographical location, suggesting environmental adaptation of the landraces.

Conclusion: Thus, the present work identified the existence of inherent variability in the landraces of rice that could be used to exploit the variability directly or through crop improvement programs.