Variability studies in induced mutants of Mahsuri rice (Oriza sativa L.)

摘要

Rice (Oriza sativa L.) is the staple food for more than 60 per cent of the world's population inhabiting Asia, Africa and Latin America. Rice provides more calories per hectare than any other cereal crop. Though India has the largest area under rice, its production per unit area is by world standards, very low and in India rice is being grown in an area of 42 million hectares with a production of about 82 million tones. The growth rate during 1994-95 was estimated at 5.3 per cent as against 3.8 percent in 1993-94. However at the present level of production growth, India would be required to add annually not less than 2.5 million tones of rice to sustain the present level of self sufficiency (Pillai, 1996). So, in order to further improve the genetic yield potential of rice, it is essential to create variability and understand the nature of variability, heritability and genetic advance of yield and yield component characters in planning for the improvement of this crop. Hence, the study was madein this direction by studying six quantitative characters among seventeen genotypes.