West Java local rice panicle branching architecture

Abstract

As local varieties of rice have a very important role as a source of valuable traits in developing high yielding variety through plant breeding programs, it is needed to be characterized. Panicle branching characterization is one of the efforts to understand local varieties of rice characteristics more. We have observed thirtheen characters of panicle branching on 24 West Java local rice varieties. Five panicles of each varieties as accession was observed and statistical analysed. Tukey’s Honest Significant Difference (HSD) test showed differences among accessions in all panicle branching characteristics observed. Based on Principles Component Analysis (PCA), the panicle branching characters observed generally showed the same direction, but among them were not always to be correlated. In the result of clustering based on the ward linkage method, the accessions were divided into two clusters. The first one had 8 members, and the second one had 16 members. The cophenetic correlation coefficient was 0.60, indicated that the clustering through standardized value was faithfully enough to represent the original distances. The result of this research can provide the information for breeder in selecting rice genotypes which have more seeds per panicle as parent in assembling new high yielding rice varieties.