MORPHO-PHYSIOLOGICAL AND GENETIC CHARACTERIZATION OF TRANSPLANTED AMAN RICE VARIETIES UNDER OLD BRAHMAPUTRA FLOOD PLAIN (AEZ-9) IN BANGLADESH

Abstract

Rice is a staple food in terms of acreage and production in Bangladesh. The assessment of genetic variability in rice genotypes is essential to identify suitable characters for its further improvement. An experiment was carried out to study the morpho-physiological and genetic characteristics of transplanted Aman (one of the important rice growing seasons in Bangladesh) rice cultivars. Ten Aman rice varieties were tested as treatments and the experiment was laid out in a Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD) with three replications. The analysis of morpho-physiological traits in tested rice varieties demonstrated that the higher number of effective tillers per hill, panicle length, grains per panicle and 1000 grain weight was the most yield contributing traits those were influenced to produce higher grain yield. In terms of genetic traits analyses, all the studied traits exhibited high heritability (>60%) except panicle length. And in correlation studies, grain yield showed the significant positive correlation with 1000 seed weight, panicle length, effective tiller number per hill along with biological yield, straw yield and harvest index. Moreover, path coefficient analysis revealed that biological yield and harvest index showed a high and positive direct effect on grain yield. Thus, after studying different traits among ten varieties of Aman rice there after considering the three categories, hybrid varieties performed better followed by HYV compared to traditional rice varieties. And the Dhanigold variety might be recommended as a higher yield producing cultivar along with the economic return.