Agronomic performance and farmers' preferences of twelve spring rice genotypes under participatory approach at Kailali, Nepal

The purpose of this paper was to assess the agronomic performance and farmers’ preferences of spring rice genotypes in collaboration with farmers. This experiment was conducted from February to June, 2023 at Khaira, Bhajani Municipality in Farmer’s Field School. The experiment was laid out in Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD), with three replications, testing twelve rice varieties involving 37 small holder farmers. The individual plot size was 10m × 2m with plant spacing maintained at 20cm × 20cm. The data were analysed using the ANOVA technique in R-Studio software (version 4.0), and Fisher’s Protected LSD test was applied for mean separation. Results revealed that yield and yield attributes along with days to maturity were statistically different among genotypes. Maximum grain yield was found in Chaite-5 (10.75 t/ha) followed by IR16L1831 (10.33 t/ha) which was statistically at par with genotype IR10L118 (10.07 t/ha), while the lowest yields were obtained in Chaite-4 (5.77 t/ha) followed by local check variety Chaini-Local (6.77 t/ha). The findings showed that SVIN-191 (139 days) and Hardinath-5 (138 days) had the highest duration to reach maturity. In contrast, the Chaini-Local variety had the shortest time to maturity, taking only 113 days, while Chaite-4 and IR10L152 required 119 and 122 days, respectively. On participatory varietal selection, the farmer preference score was found maximum in genotype IR10L152 (0.055) followed by a popular variety Chaite-5 (0.047) which signifies these genotypes have certain traits of farmer preference. Moreover, the preference for the genotype IR10L152 above the high-yielding variety Chaite-5 indicates that the farmers in Kailali took several desirable traits into consideration for rice variety selection rather than just high yield.