influence of genetic and genotype x environment interaction on quality of rice grain

Abstract

Rice (Oryza sativa) grain attributes, including among others milling quality, grain length and shape, amylose content, and aroma are critical in varietal development and subsquent adoption at the farm level. It is, therefore, important to understand the influence of genetic and G x E interaction on these grain attibutes. Thus, experiments were laid out during 1999-2000 at the Tanganyika Agricultural Cooperative, Ifakara (irrigated culture) and at Sokoine University of Agriculture (upland conditions) both in Morogoro region, to obtain relative magnitudes of
variety x environment interactions, heritability and genetic advance aspects on physical and biochemical rice grain quality attributes. High significant positive genotypic and phenotypic correlations were revealed between gel consistency (GC) and both the grain length (GL) and amylose content (AC). Gel consistency had high estimates
of heritability and expected genetic advance, and is thus a reliable selection criterion for amylose content in early generations of rice improvement. The observed variation among genotypes under different environments suggest that in order to ensure high grain quality, there is need to select genotypes for particular cropping environments.