Stability Analysis in Rice (Oryza sativa L.) Genotypes with High Grain Zinc

Abstract

Background: Balanced nutrition is an essential part of human diet and rice being consumed by more than half of the world population, having rice cultivars biofortified for high Zinc levels in polished rice would be very important to combat issues of malnutrition. Zinc being a highly variable trait and influenced by environmental and soil conditions, a multi-location stability analysis was conducted to identify cultivars stable for high grain Zinc with consistency in yield performance. Methods: Present experiment was conducted to study the stability of 22 high zinc rice genotypes in five different locations of Eastern Uttar Pradesh in RCBD with three replications in all the locations and 12 different traits were included in the study. Eberhart and Russell model was used for evaluating the stability of the genotypes. Results: The results reported high significance for all the twelve characters studied. Mean sum of squares due to environment as well as linear component of environment were significant for all the characters suggesting presence of variation among the five environments tested. All the twenty-two genotypes showed significant differences for all the characters when tested against pooled error and pooled deviation. The genotype, IR15M1633 recorded highest mean grain Zinc content but have negative association with yield. Therefore, considering for a high grain Zinc genotype with consistent yield performance, the genotypes, DRR Dhan 48 and HURZ-3 showed good mean values for all the traits and was also stable for grain zinc, yield per hectare, 1000 grain weight, had shorter plant height and can be suggested for use as high yielding cultivars with high grain Zinc and could be further used in breeding programmes successfully.