Abstract
Wild species of rice (Oryza) have superior agronomic characteristics to be incorporated in rice breeding programs worldwide. Population studies of wild relatives of rice in Sri Lanka has not being well documented despite a few of attempts. In the present study, phenotypic diversity of Oryza rufipogon populations exist in Sri Lanka were characterized based on nine quantitative morphological traits. Populations (P1, P2, P3, P4 and P5) were established in a common-garden and were characterized. The results revealed moderate phenotypic diversity among O. rufipogon populations studied. However, flag leaf length and awn length were the most variable traits while plant height, flag leaf angle, flag leaf panicle neck length and spikelet angle were the least variable traits. O. rufipogon can be simply distinguished using flag leaf length and width, panicle branching type and distance from panicle base to lowest spikelet insertion. The dendrogram results indicated that four main clusters are at a similarity level of 98.73, showing the diversely related populations with a high identity based on higher similarity values. P1 and P2 populations grouped together by forming the first cluster. The second, third and fourth clusters consisted of P3, P5 and P4 populations, respectively. One population from first cluster and P3, P5 and P4 populations can be used for conservation. This study highlights the phenotypic diversity of O. rufipogon populations existing in Sri Lanka across the geographic locations and Knowledge on such morphological diversity provides opportunities to design conservation strategies and the potentials of using particular population based on breeding objectives.
Highlights
The rice genus Oryza contains approximately 23 species distributed in Asia, Africa, Australia and America
The present study focused on the genotypic diversity of Oryza rufipogon in natural wild rice populations in Sri Lanka
All these results clearly indicate that the existing variations amongst the morphological traits of Sri Lankan wild rice (O. rufipogon) suggest that they can be used to distinguish it from weedy rice and cultivated rice
Summary
The rice genus Oryza contains approximately 23 species distributed in Asia, Africa, Australia and America. Only two are cultivated and the remaining 21 species are wild relatives of rice (Vaughan, 1989; Vaughan et al, 2003). Species containing AAgenome are the most accessible genetic resources because of their high genetic compatibility with cultivated rice and transfer of alien genes from those wild relatives can be achieved through sexual hybridization (Ren et al, 2003). O. rufipogon is broadly distributed in the regions of tropics and subtropics in Asia (Vaughan, 1994). This species is recorded to occur in 113 counties in the world. O. rufipogon has species-specific features compared with other Oryza species
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
