Analysis of Combining Ability in Rice Varieties for Quantitative Traits

Abstract

Rice is staple food in Iran. Despite of high quality of local rice, their grain yield is low. In hybridization breeding programs, selection of suitable parents is an essential role for developing new combinations with broadens genetic diversity. Combining ability of local rice varieties namely ‘Hashemi’, ‘Sang Jo’ and ‘Tarom Deylamani’ and ‘Nemat’ was evaluated in a partial diallele analysis for agronomic traits in a randomized complete block design at Sari Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources University. General combining ability (GCA) and specific combining ability (SCA) variances showed predominated role of additive gene effects in the inheritance of grain length. Both additive and non-additive components of genetic variances were important in the inheritance of traits like grain yield, plant height, panicle length, total grains per panicle, grain length and grain length to width. However, non-additive gene effects were seen for tiller number. Results showed that ‘Nemat’ was the best general combiner for most of characters followed by ‘Tarom Deylamani’. The cross of ‘Hashemi’ × ‘Tarom Deylamani’ was suggested to exploitation of heterosis breeding for increasing yield and its components in rice breeding programs.