Selection for drought tolerance in rice genotypes based on principal components and seletion indices

Abstract

Rice being the hugely consumed crop worldwide is unfortunately facing a severe yield loss due to drought stress. In this view, the study was conducted at Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru College of Agriculture and Research Institue, Karaikal during late samba of 2018 using 48 rice genotypes with an objective to select discriminating rice genotypes for drought tolerance based on principal component analysis (PCA) and selection index. The field experiments were laid out in normal and drought conditions using RBD design with three replications. Traits such as days to 50 per cent flowering, plant height, productive tillers, panicle length, grains per panicle, grain weight, grain yield were observed under both the environments, additionally relative water content, leaf senescence, leaf rolling, leaf drying and stress percentage were observed under drought environment. The PCA had reduced the 12 traits into six traits viz., days to 50 per cent flowering, plant height, panicle length, grains per panicle, grain yield and stress percentage across the environments. Selection index computed with the economic weights derived from PCA had registered the genotype IET-27693 with high index score for drought tolerance.

Keywords

• rice
• drought tolerant
• pca
• selection index