Directorate of Rice Research (DRR), through All India Coordinated ...

DRR Annual Progress Report 2010, Vol.1 – Varietal Improvement
SUMMARY
Directorate of Rice Research (DRR) through All India Coordinated Rice Improvement Project
(AICRIP) organizes inter-disciplinary and inter-institutional collaborative testing of elite lines and improved
management practices for all the rice growing ecosystems to find solutions to the problems of crop production
based on the Guidelines for Crop Variety Testing. During the year 2010, 41 varietal trials, 6 hybrid rice trials
were conducted as 706 experiments at 115 locations (46 funded, 69 voluntary centres) in 27 states and 2 Union
Territories in all the 5 regions of the country. Hybrid rice experiments are conducted by 6 private seed
companies as well. The 47 trials were constituted with 970 entries, including 88 experimental hybrids and
checks. The receipt of data has been 90.59% for funded, 70.94% for voluntary with the overall being 86.31%.
In addition, 13 INGER nurseries involving 864 entries were tested at 46 experimental sites. The 3-tier AICRIP
testing programme is organized as Initial Variety Trial, Advance Variety Trial-1 and Advance Variety Trial-2 in
order to identify the best elite lines with consistent high yield potential taking into consideration the cut off
flowering duration which is a requirement for various rice growing areas, situations and prevailing rice based
cropping systems. For the direct seeded water limited upland situations, drought tolerance and earliness are
essential requirements. For the vast unfavourable lowland regions of eastern and north-eastern India long
duration, submergence/drought tolerance are the pre-requisites and efforts are directed to identify suitable elite
lines. For irrigated ecology, breaking the yield ceiling is a challenge and blending quality with biotic stress
tolerance in various duration groups are the major objectives intensely pursued, through conventional and
heterosis breeding procedures. The Marker Assisted Selection (MAS) derived products are being validated for
the introgressed genes such as Sub1 for submergence tolerance through near isogenic lines trials. Quality is the
hall mark in the improvement of Basmati and in indigenous short grain aromatic rices. Soil stress tolerant
trials focus in identifying stress tolerant lines for a range of complex problem soil situations such as salinity,
alkalinity and coastal salinity. New trials to address the need for identifying appropriate genotypes for the
aerobic cultivation practices have been initiated as availability of water is going to decline in future.
International cooperation through INGER global testing which is more than three decades old is continued with
facilitated access of germplasm and testing of breeding lines in collaboration with IRRI, Philippines.
LIST OF COORDINATED TRIALS 2010
Ecosystem AVT 2 AVT 1 IVT Screening
nursery
Very early AVT-VE DS & TP IVT-VE DS
Early AVT 2- E TP AVT 1- E DS & TP IVT-E DS & TP / IHRT-E
Rainfed shallow IVT-RSL
Semi-deep water IVT-SDW NSDWSN
Deep water IVT-DW
Mid-Early AVT1- IME IVT-IME / IHRT-IME
Medium AVT2 -IM AVT1 -IM IVT-IM / IHRT-IM/MLT
Late AVT 2- L AVT 1 -L IVT – L/ SLHRT
Medium slender IHRT-MS
Boro IVT-Boro
Basmati AVT 2-BT AVT 1-BT IVT-BT
Aromatic short grain IVT-ASG ASGON
Saline alkaline AL & ISTVT NSASN
Hills AVT2- E (H) AVT 1- E (H) IVT-I E(H)
AVT 1- M (H) IVT-IM(H)
AVT 1- U (H) IVT-U(H)
Aerobic AVT 2-E - Aerobic IVT -E - Aerobic
AVT2-ME - Aerobic AVT1-ME - Aerobic IVT -ME - Aerobic
Isogenic lines AVT1-NIL SUB
1.i