Unravelling the Genetic Variability in rice germplasm under temperate conditions of Kashmir valley

The present investigation was undertaken to generate information on variability, character association in 247 genotypes including 242 test germplasm accessions (comprising local landraces a well as accessions procured from national and international gene banks) and five checks namely Shalimar Rice-1, Shalimar Rice-2, Shalimar Rice-3, Shalimar Rice-4 and Shalimar Rice-5. The analysis of variance under augmented block design revealed that the mean sum of squares for blocks ignoring treatments showed significant results for characters like plant height, number of grains per panicle, 1000 seed weight and yield per plant, while blocks eliminating treatments showed significant results for all the characters except, number of effective tillers per plant and number of grains per panicle. Both treatments when ignoring blocks and treatments eliminating blocks showed significant results for all the characters except for number of efffective tillers per plant. The mean sum of squares was significant for all traits in test entries except number of efffective tillers per plant. For checks, the mean sum of squares showed significance for all the characters . The mean sum of squares for checks vs entries also were significant for all the traits. The magnitude of phenotypic coefficient of variation was recorded to be moderatefor plant height ,number of effective tillers per plant, panicle length,1000 seed weight and high for number of grains per panicleand for yield per plant. Also the magnitude of genotypic coefficient of variation was recorded to be low for Number of effective tillers per plant while as it was moderatefor plant height, panicle length,1000 seed weight and high for both number of grains per panicle and yield per plant.High heritability (> 70 %) was shown by grain yield per plant, , test weight, plant height, , test weight. Number of effective tillers per plant exhibited significant positive correlation with panicle length, and 1000 seed weight and was found to be highly significant with grain yield.