Agro-Morphological Characterization, Genetic Variation and Heritability Analysis of Rice Landraces (Oryza sativa L.) of Arunachal Pradesh, Northeast India

The present study describes characterization of 35 rice landraces collected from different parts of Arunachal Pradesh. High degree of variations was observed for morphological traits. Mean plant height of 127.39 cm, panicle length (25.7 cm), flag leaf length (40.54 cm), flag leaf width (2.10 cm), blade leaf length (58.66 cm), blade leaf width (1.82 cm), ligule length (2.14 cm), test weight (2.44 g) and mean grain yield per hectare of (18.65 q/ha) were recorded respectively. The cluster analysis grouped 35 landraces into 4 clusters (67% dissimilarity) in which Jhum and wetland landraces formed distinct clusters. The first three PCA extracted accounted for 81.64% of the total variation based on 12 phenotypic traits. A significant positive association was observed among the traits, and the genetic variability computation revealed higher PCV than GCV. Highest PCV (43.61%), GCV (43.3%), heritability (98.44%) and GAM (88.43%) were recorded for grain yield. The high variability with promising yield potential among the Arunachal Pradesh landraces is expected to be significance immense significance for rice breeding programmes.