Agro-morphological characterization of rice (Oryza sativa L.) landraces of Lamjung and Tanahun District, Nepal.

Agro-morphological characterization of crop is the basic criteria to provide fundamental information for plant breeding programs. An investigation was conducted in Agronomy farm of Institute of Agriculture and Animal Science, Lamjung Campus in alpha-lattice design with two replications. The objective of the study was to characterize thirty landraces of rice ( Oryza sativa L.) of Lamjung and Tanahun district based on 30 qualitative and 8 quantitative characters, recorded as per descriptor established by IRRI, Bioversity International and WARDA. The frequency distribution of qualitative characters were studied where panicle shattering, lemma & palea color, culm lodging resistance and Leaf senescence showed high variability. The maximum value, minimum value, coefficient of variation and Pearson correlation were analyzed to study quantitative characters. The coefficient of variation ranged from 5.4% (Grain Length: Breadth ratio) to 20% (Total Tillers) indicating that selection based on the characters showing higher variation is expected to be effective. The highest correlation was corresponded to the total tillers and effective tillers (r=0.978 ** ). Flag leaf length showed positive significant correlation with penultimate leaf length (r=0.674 ** ), total tillers (r=0.437 ** ), effective tillers (r=0.356 ** ) and Grain Length: Breadth ratio (r=0.430 ** ). UPGMA clustering of the genotypes was done where members of cluster IV were found to be more superior. Promising landraces were identified from different yield attributing characters like total tillers, total grains per panicle, 1000 grain weight, panicle length and filled grain percentage. Thus, the present study can be utilized for further rice improvement programs and can also be used for assessing genetic diversity among morphologically distinguishable rice landraces.