Exploring the Phenotypic and Genetic Variabilities in Yield and Yield-Related Traits of the Diallel-Crossed F5 Population of Aus Rice

Rice (Oryza sativa) is a major crop and a main food for a major part of the global population. Rice species have derived from divergent agro-climatic regions, and thus, the local germplasm has a large genetic diversity. This study investigated the relationship between phenotypic and genetic variabilities of yield and yield-associated traits in Aus rice to identify short-duration, high-yielding genotypes. Targeting this issue, a field experiment was carried out to evaluate the performance of 51 Aus rice genotypes, including 50 accessions in F-5 generation and one short-duration check variety BINAdhan-19. The genotypes exhibited a large and significant variation in yield and its associated traits, as evidenced by a wide range of their coefficient of variance. The investigated traits, including days to maturity (DM), plant height (PH), panicle length (PL) and 1000-grain weight (TW) exhibited a greater genotypic coefficient of variation than the environmental coefficient of variation. In addition, the high broad-sense heritability of DM, PH, PL and TW traits suggests that the genetic factors significantly influence the observed variations in these traits among the F5 Aus rice accessions. This study also revealed that the grain yield per hill (GY) displayed a significant positive correlation with PL, number of filled grains per panicle (FG) and TW at both genotype and phenotype levels. According to the hierarchical and K-means cluster analyses, the accessions BU-R-ACC-02, BU-R-ACC-08 and R2-36-3-1-1 have shorter DM and relatively higher GY than other Aus rice accessions. These three accessions could be employed in the ongoing and future breeding programs for the improvement of short-duration and high-yielding rice cultivars.