HETEROSIS IN F1 GENERATIONS OF TWO INDICA RICE CROSSES FOR GROWTH AND YIELD CHARACTERISTICS

Abstract

Rice (Oryza sativa L.) is the main food crop for more than half of the world population. Use of heterosis is one of the greatest practical achievements of plant breeding. Two single crosses, Bg 379-2 x Mu 8-7 (Cross 1) and Bg 379-2 x Bw 400 (Cross 2) were chosen to study the heterosis and genetic effects in yield related agronomic characters of rice. F1 hybrids along with their parents were evaluated in a Randomized Complete Block Design with four replicates. Cross 1 showed significant heterobeltiosis for leaf width (LW), panicle length (PL) and plant height (PH) while Cross 2 showed significant heterobeltiosis for LW, culm length (CL), and PH. Additive genetic effect is higher than the dominance effect in days to 50% flowering (DF), CL and panicles per plant (PP) in Cross 1, while dominance effect is higher than the additive genetic effect in seedling height, LW, CL and PH in Cross 2. Bg 379-2 x Mu 8-7 is a more potential cross that agreed with breeding objectives, especially to extract short age high yielding breeding lines.