Vol. 11, Issue 8 (2022)

Author(s):
Ambati Janardhan Reddy, Kantam Manoj Pushkarnath, G Roopa Lavanya and Gaibriyal M Lal

Abstract:
The present study consists of 40 rice genotypes including one check variety were evaluated at Field Experimentation Centre of the Department of Genetics and Plant Breeding, to estimate genetic variability, heritability and diversity for 13 quantitative characters. The experiment was conducted by using Randomized Block Design with three replications during Kharif, 2021. MTU-1172 (71.287) to be high yielding followed by, MTU-1155 (67.334), SHIATS DHAN-6 (62.133) showed higher yield over the NDR359 (check). High to moderate estimates of GCV and PCV were recorded for Grain yield per hill followed by biological yield, harvest index, number of tillers/hill, test weight, number of spikelets/hill, number of panicles/hill, flag leaf width, flag leaf length and plant height. Divergence analysis following Mahalanobis (1936) D² analysis has revealed presence of substantial amount of genetic diversity among the genotypes. These 40 genotypes were grouped into 6 clusters by following Tocher’s method as described by Rao (1952). Cluster I contain 35 genotypes, while the cluster II, III, IV, V, VI were Monogenotypic. The maximum inter cluster distance was observed between Cluster II and IV (188.41) and minimum between cluster I and II (152.00). Variance of cluster means revealed that Biological yield, Grain yield per hill, Number of spikelet’s had a maximum contribution towards divergence in the present material. Thus, these genotypes present in these clusters provide a broad spectrum of variability in segregation and may be used as parents in the future hybridization programme to develop desirable genotypes for grain yield improvement in rice genotypes.