Agronomic characters of some traditional rice cultivars in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Sri Lanka is a biodiversity hotspot and its traditional rice cultivars demonstrate wide range of characters which differ from one another and also differ from modem rice cultivars. Twenty traditional rice cultivars were grown at Faculty of Agriculture, University of Ruhuna in Yala/2011. The experiment was carried out according to randomized complete block design with three replicates and 20 plants were evaluated for each character. Plant height, leaf blade length, leaf blade width, culm length, number of tillers, number of reproductive tillers, panicle length, number of spikelets per panicle, Number of fertile spikelets, seed width, seed length and 100 seed weight were measured. Well known modem rice cultivar Bg379/2 was also cultivated in the same field and values of Bg 379/2 was demonstrated in the trait distribution graphs. Interesting results were obtained in the field data. The tallest rice cultivar, Podihitatha recorded 198 cm average plant height and the shortest rice cultivar Rathran Wee recorded 68 cm while the longest leaf blade and longest culm length were also recorded by Podihitatha. The highest number of tillers was recorded by rice cultivar Mahasudu wee which was 9.6 tillers per plant in average while the highest average number of reproductive tillers per plant was also recorded as 9 in Mahasudu wee.