Varietal Diversity of Rice Crop in Sub-tropical Jammu Region of Jammu and Kashmir

In the Jammu region, rice (Oryza sativa) is the main cereal crop cultivated on an area of 0.15 million hectare (mha) in kharif season under irrigated condition. A study was conducted in Jammu, Samba and Kathua districts of Jammu region to find out the varietal diversity of rice. A sample of 240 rice growers was selected by multistage sampling technique. Majority of farmers in the sub-tropics had cultivated basmati (70%) followed by semi-fine varieties (13%), coarse varieties (9%) and hybrids (8%) in the study area. Extent of adoption of basmati rice was 100, 92 and 84 per cent in the Samba, Jammu and Kathua districts. Extent of adoption with respect to area was basmati (72%) followed by semi-fine varieties (14%), coarse varieties (7%) and hybrids (7%). Basmati varieties cultivated were Basamti-370 and Pusa-1121. Semi-fine, coarse varieties and hybrids of rice were also cultivated by the rice growers in the study area. The semi- fine variety Sharbati was cultivated by 12.5 per cent of the farmers in Kathua and Samba districts each, whereas in Jammu district 21.25 per cent of the farmers cultivated Sharbati rice. The coarse varieties Jaya and PR-113 were cultivated by 5 per cent and 33.8 per cent of the farmers respectively in Kathua district. None of the farmer in Samba and Jammu districts cultivated these coarse varieties. In hybrids, Dhanya 748 was cultivated by 11.25 per cent of the farmers of Kathua district and only 1.25 per cent of the farmers of Samba district cultivated this hybrid. Other hybrids like Dhanya 834 was cultivated by 2.5 per cent each was cultivated by Jammu and Samba districts. The other rice hybrid VNR 2355 was cultivated by 7.5 per cent of the rice growers in Jammu district. None of the farmers of Kathua district cultivated hybrid rice Dhanya 834 and VNR 2355.The mean varietal diversity of rice crop in the study area was 0.131±0.009 calculated by using Thiel’s entropy index. The mean varietal diversity index of Jammu, Samba and Kathua was 0.103, 0.127 and 0.161, respectively. The difference in mean varietal diversity index of rice between Jammu and Kathua was 0.056 which was found to be statistically significant (p=0.011). The varietal diversity in rice crop is on the lower side, especially in Jammu district. This could be due to because of the farmers predominantly cultivating Pusa-1121 and Basmati-370.