A comparative study on local and newly introduced rice varieties in Ebonyi State of Nigeria based on selected agronomic characteristics.

The Choice of rice varieties by farmers and the rate at which farmers in Ebonyi state go for new rice varieties at the expense of indigenous varieties have become a source of worry to scientists. We assessed the agronomic characteris- tics of 15 selected indigenous and newly introduced hybrid rice varieties in Ebonyi State, Nigeria. The Rice cultivars were grown under the same conditions and screened for morpho-agronomic traits. Significant variation (P<0.05) was detected among the 20 rice varieties for all the traits evaluated. The results showed that plant height ranged between 144.01 cm in "Mass (I)" and 76.00 cm in "Chinyeugo". Cv. "E4197" had the highest value of 38±0.02 cm for panicle length and "Chin- yereugo" had the highest value of 6.3g ± 0.03 for panicle weight. Leaf area showed the highest value of 63.8cm 2 ± 0.01 in "Mass (I)". Flowering time ranged from 138 ± 0.1days in "Mass (I)" to 68 ± 0.04 days in "Chinyereugo" while "Mass (II)" and "E4077" took the shortest period of 14 days after flowering to mature. Cv. "Co-operative" had high number of seeds per panicle (139 ± 0.19). "Chinyereugo" had the highest value of 25.9g ±1.4 for 1000-grains weight. The grain of "E4314" was the longest (8.00 mm ± 0.89) of the varieties studied. The grains of "Awilo" had a grain width of 2.62mm ± 0.04, while "E4197" had the highest value for grain width of 4.1 mm. Farmers should, therefore, be critical in accepting new varieties that may not be comparably outstanding in a holistic sense, in order to preserve the integrity of the all-cherished indigenous rice varieties .