Morphological Depiction of Seeds of Landraces of Rice (Oryza sativa L.)

The landraces of rice play an important role as donor in breeding of varieties for desirable traits. One hundred twenty-one Farmers’ Varieties (FVs) of rice collected from West Bengal, Assam and Manipur had used to characterize the physical parameters of seeds. Based on the kernel length and L/B ratio, most of the FVs were found to be long bold (31 FVs) and short bold (47 FVs). Out of the remaining 43 FVs, 27 were long slender, 03 were short slender and 11 were medium slender. Rice seeds were also classified based on test weight. Most of the FVs were medium-heavy (50 FVs) and heavy (27 FVs). The yield of the FVs varied from 0.91 t/ha to 5.19 t/ha. Jadudhan (5.19 t/ha) was found to be the maximum seed-yielding genotype followed by Jaldhyapa-1 (4.92 t/ha), Jagratikartik (4.69 t/ha), Jamainaru (4.68 t/ha), Kerala Sundari (4.58 t/ha), Satiya (4.44 t/ha), Dubari Komal (4.32 t/ha), Jugal (4.08 t/ha), Boichi (4.06 t/ha), Patanai (4.06 t/ha), UBL-4 (4.05 t/ha) and Khayamdhan (4.01 t/ha). From this collection, donors may be selected for breeding long-grained rice as well as rice with high test weight.