Unravelling genetic diversity of South Indian rice landraces based on yield and its components

Traditional varieties are considered as key natural resources necessary to maintain future food security in the current climate change era. Conserving these traditional varieties are the need of the hour as they harbour many valuable genes which could be exploited for crop breeding. Genetic diversity for morphological traits in a population can be assessed using a variety of techniques, including univariate and multivariate analysis. A diverse panel of 60 traditional landraces of rice was evaluated for 14 the pattern of genetic diversity and relationship based on morphological traits by multivariate analysis like Mahalanobis’ D² and principal component analyses and correlation analysis was utilized to examine the association among morphological traits. The 60 genotypes were grouped in to eight clusters based on cluster analysis. Principal component analysis revealed that the cumulative variance of 74.41% of total variation among 14 characters was explained by the frst fve axes. Study of association among traits indicated that direct selection based on the traits such as number of grains per panicle, fag leaf length, kernel length, length to breadth ratio and hundred seed weight would be the traits of top priority for yield improvement in rice.