Assessment of Agro-morphological Characters among Complete Panicle Emergence Mutants of Samba Mahsuri (BPT-5204)

Aims: The aim of the present work was to generate complete panicle emergence mutants of Samba Mahsuri (BPT-5204), using the chemical mutagen, ethyl methane sulphonate (EMS)

Place and Duration of Study: The field evaluation was carried out repeatedly in two locations at Indian Institute of Rice Research, Rajendranagar and at ICRISAT Patancheru Hyderabad. The duration of the study was three successive seasons in triplicates namely, june-2014, january-2015 and june-2015.

Methodology: Seedlings of 28-30 days old were transplanted in 5 lines (each line containing 20 plants) into the field. The plant spacing was 20 cm by 15 cm with density of one hill. The field was irrigated throughout the experiment with average of 10 cm water above the soil level. Regular hand weeding was embarked upon to free the plant of inter specific competition. The phenotypic data was recorded for CPE mutants through visual assessment. The characteristics that required measurements were done according to the usual procedure. The Distinctness, Uniformity and stability of the CPE mutant lines have been recorded following (DUS) test guidelines by UPOV guidelines for rice (38) & Yoshida S (44).

Results: The identified stabilized thirteen complete panicle emergence (CPE) mutants showed superior agro morphological characters, compared with wild type (BPT-5204). The mutants CPE-2 and CPE-3 took 100 days to flowering and CPE-4 and CPE-7 mutants showed superiority for panicle length, and CPE-5 exhibited good performance for grain yield. In correlation analysis CPE trait had a significantly positive correlation with PH and TGW and negative correlation with 50%DFF. The CPE mutants used in the present study exhibited variability for most of the studied traits. Significant variation was detected in the identified stabilized CPE mutants for plant height, panicle length, flag leaf length and width, 50% flowering, different grain types and 1000 grain weight.

Conclusion: The present study discovered adequate genetic divergence in the thirteen stabilized CPE mutants for various qualitative and quantitative traits. The promising mutants identified during the current study have the potential to be used in future breeding programs for getting productive and quality results.