Variation of panicle characteristics in seven rice genotypes and F2 populations

K. Nurul Afza, O. Mohamad and I. Alias 

Abstract
Rice variety MR276 has high values number of filled grain per panicle, the number of primary branches per panicle and 100-grain weights. There is a positive and highly significant relationship between number of primary branches per panicle and number of filled grain per panicle (r = 0.79*). All the panicle component characters had high heritability estimate. The variation of panicle characters of rice in the F2 generation was studied. The F2 population of IR64 x MR276 showed wide variations for the traits of primary branches with the range of 7 – 19 primary branches per panicle, 56 – 248 for the filled grain per panicle, 28 – 38 g for the 1000-grain weight and 3 – 8 g for the grain weight per panicle. The F2 plants showed normal distribution for all the panicle traits in each population. The variations of primary branches and filled grain per panicle in the F2 population for MRQ86 x IR73895-33-1-3-2 showed a wide range from 7 – 14 primary branches and 85 – 219 filled grains per panicle. The distributions of the 1000-grain weight and grain weights per panicle were uniform. Therefore, it is concluded that the large panicle type of rice is contributed by genotypes with more number of primary branches and number of filled grain. It is recommended to use these characters as new selection criteria in breeding for improve rice yield production. The F2 plants performed better than the parents for the number of primary branches and filled grain per panicle.

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