GENETIC ANALYSES FOR YIELD AND YIELD CHARACTERS IMPROVEMENT IN AROMATIC AND NON-AROMATIC RICE (ORYZA SATIVA L.) OF SELECTED CROSSES FROM GENOTYPES FROM MOZAMBIQUE AND MALAWI UNDER IRRIGATION

Abstract

An experiment was laid out in a randomized complete block design (RCBD) with three replications at Lifuwu Rice research station, Salima district, Malawi during winter 2015/16 cropping season. Genetic analyses for yield and yield components were performed in selected hybrids derived from aromatic and non-aromatic rice (Orysa sativa L) crosses and their parental genotypes from Mozambique and Malawi.  The results revealed that the hybrids and their parents differed significantly (p<0.05) for all the traits studied except culm number, suggesting that conventional breeding program for yield and yield characters can start using these genotypes hence they constitute a pool of germplasm with adequate genetic variability. Genotypic coefficients of variation were lower than the corresponding phenotypic coefficients in all the characters. High broad sense heritability was found on vegetative vigour (0.70), plant height (0.70), 1000 grains weight (0.85) and grain yield (0.68) indicating that direct selection for yield and yield components improvement can be effectively performed using these traits. These results, indicate the potential for production of high grain yield recombinant inbreed lines and also the design of a breeding program that aims to study agronomic characters to improve the productivity of rice varieties in both Mozambique and Malawi.