Agro-morphological Characterization and Molecular Analysis of Rice Landraces Collected from Tribal Belts of Maharashtra

Background: India has a large number of locally adapted landraces with specific traits like aroma, taste, medicinal properties, high nutritional value, disease resistance, etc. Genetic diversity in crop germplasm is estimated using morphological and molecular markers, which is an important criterion for plant improvement. Methods: A total of 144 landraces and 16 farmers’ varieties of rice collected from nine districts of Maharashtra were evaluated in a field trial at Jawhar block in the kharif season, which was conducted in a randomized block design (RBD) in triplicate during 2016 to 2019. The morphological characters were recoded as per DUS guidelines and among them, 45 landraces were evaluated by using molecular markers at the BAIF Development Research Foundation, Pune. Result: Morphological characters revealed a wide range of variation within the landraces and farmers’ varieties. The landraces Singa, Masura, Padharwanji, Masuri, Sudi, Gadagutawanji, Pandari Luchi and Kasbai gave significantly higher grain and straw yields. In addition, these landraces were tall and non-lodging. PCA analysis of the morphological characters showed character-specific grouping, also indicating higher variability for quantitative traits. The five Inter Simple Sequence Repeats (ISSRs) markers revealed 90.02% polymorphism. Dendrogram and PCoA revealed an absence of geographical structuring in the landraces, possibly due to the introduction of gene pools from different locations.