Comparative Assessment of Genetic Diversity in Aerobic Rice

Water, the elixir of life is becoming scarce as indicated by gradually declining per capita availability of fresh water resources in the intensive rice growing countries, which will affect production and productivity of rice in coming years. There are many available water saving technologies and ¿Aerobic rice¿ is one among them, where rice is grown under well aerated, non¿puddled soil without standing water. A study was conducted on 25 rice genotypes at Rainout Shelter (aerobic condition) and Rice Breeding section (normal condition), RAU, Pusa, Samastipur, Bihar during kharif 14 for ¿COMPARATIVE ASSESSMENT OF GENETIC DIVERSITY IN AEROBIC RICE¿ and was laid out in Randomized Block Design with three replications for 15 morpho-physiological characters. RAU 1417-2-1-5-7-7 & RAU 1417-2-1-5-7-7 selected for earliness under aerobic and normal condition. Under aerobic condition, the genotypes viz., RAU1417-2-1-5-7-7 exhibited superiority for proline accumulation in leaves. The genotypes viz., RAU1397-18-3-7-9-4-7 were selected for traits like panicle length, spikelets per panicle, tillers per plant, RWC in flag leaf, maximum root length, flag leaf area, chlorophyll content and grain yield.