Morphological and Variability Studies on Androecium and Gynoeceium in Rice Landraces and Hybrids (Oryza sativa L.)

Rice is the staple food of almost half of the world's population, employs millions in jobs and has enormous impact on the environment. It is self-pollinated crop significant cross pollination occurs depending on their flowering behaviors, floral characters amount of pollen available from the pollen parents and prevailing weather conditions. Genetic improvement for floral behavior and floral traits and pollen parents and modifications in seed production practices are useful for push in hybrid seed production. The experimental material consisted of four traditionally grown and nutrient rich medicinal landraces and six improved high yielding varieties along with selected F₁ hybrids raised in randomized block design during Kharif season 2013. Among them the medicinal landrace Kavuni of Tamil Nadu recorded highest significant mean value for anther length, anther breadth, stigma lengthand stigma breadth. Higher values of PCV and GCV were recorded for stigma breadth followed by style breadth and ovary length. Most of the characters exhibited high heritability. High heritability and genetic advance were observed for stigma breadth, ovary length, style length, ovary breadth, stigma length, style breadth and anther breadth revealed the role of additive gene action. Understanding these processes will not only contribute greatly to the basic knowledge of crop development and floral biology, but also to the development of new nutritional varieties for rice breeding in the future.