Genetic improvement of Aceh local rice variety Sikuneng to produce green super rice lines adaptive to abiotic stresses

Abstract

The high genetic diversity of rice landraces of Aceh has great potential to contribute to the world’s food security program in the future, especially in adapting to climate changes and environmental degradation. The objective of this research was to develop a new superior rice line adaptive to abiotic stress and maintains high productivity despite limited agricultural inputs. An Aceh’s local variety, Sikuneng, was artificially crossed with an isogenic line IRBB27 and the F1 plants were self-pollinated for two generations. The F3 lines were cultivated in drought stress and high salinity conditions with the application of aerobic rice system and flash irrigation. It was discovered that the F3 lines showed significantly improved plant height, number of panicles per plant, panicle length, grain weight per plant and grain yield potential per hectare. The plant height of the F3 lines varied from 98 to 192 cm, whereas the plant height of Sikuneng was 172 cm. The number of panicles of F3 lines ranged from 10.3 to 43.5, whereas Sikuneng had only 8.7 panicles. The panicle length of F3 lines ranged from 23.9 to 47.3 cm and Sikuneng had only 28.1 cm of panicle length. The grain weight per plant of F3 lines varied from 69.8 to 196.7 g, in contrast to the grain weight of Sikuneng which was 64.5 g. The weight of 1,000 grains of F3 lines ranged from 21.0 to 34.9 g, whereas that of Sikuneng was 26.9 g. While the yield potential of Sikuneng was 7.6 t/ha, the yield potential of the F3 lines varied from 7.2 to 13.9 t/ha. The highest yield potential was shown by Skn-68-1 line. Further evaluation and selection process need to be conducted in the next generations until the improved characters of the new lines are stable.