Stability of Popular Rice Hybrids for Important Grain Yield Parameters

Abstract

Nine popular rice (Oryza sativa L.) hybrids were evaluated over three years during kharif season 2008- 2010 to assess stability for grain yield and its contributing traits. Analysis of variance of stability revealed highly significant variance due to environment for all seven traits. The variance for genotypic effect was significant for all traits indicating differential response of hybrids over the environments. Estimates of environmental index showed that performance of hybrids over three environments varied and environment E2 exhibited highest favourable impact on grain yield. Only two hybrids, KRH-2 and PRH-10 revealed stability for grain yield. Hybrid ‘KRH-2’ showed stable performance for all seven characters whereas, PRH-10 exhibited stability for six traits viz.; days to 50% flowering, days to maturity, plant height, panicle length, number of filled grains per panicle and seed yield / m2. Based on stability parameters these two hybrids can be considered as stable performers and may be exploited for yield enhancement of rice under varying environmental conditions while their parental lines could be used in breeding programme to develop new cultivars with combination of stable characters.