Received : 24^th November, 2023; Acceptance : 15^th December 2023

Abstract

The demand for high quality rice among consumers has surged in recent decades due to improvements in living standards. Hence, improving grain quality without reducing grain yield is a major concern in rice breeding programmes to benefit the rice growers and consumers. Therefore, it is very crucial to study the genetic variability among the genotypes for selecting potential parents to exploit maximum heterosis and superior recombinants in terms of quality components. The present investigation was carried out at Indian Institute of Rice Research, Hyderabad during kharif 2022 with 96 rice lines to assess the genetic variability for grain quality parameters. The analysis of variance revealed a significant difference among the genotypes for all the traits studied, except volume expansion ratio, which indicates the presence of considerable amount of variation among these genotypes. Overall study on genetic variability revealed that the estimates of PCV were only slightly higher than the corresponding GCV for traits such as kernel length, kernel width, kernel length after cooking, elongation ratio, alkali spreading value, amylose content and gel consistency suggesting a lesser influence of the environment. Traits like kernel length, kernel length after cooking, alkali spreading value and gel consistency had high heritability coupled with high genetic advance which indicates the role of additive genes in the inheritance of these traits. Correlation studies revealed that, grain yield plot-1 had a significant and positive association with quality traits such as hulling, milling and head rice recovery. Therefore, simultaneous improvement for these characters is possible through selection. Binadhan 17, DR 714-1-2R, DRR Dhan 44, IR 64 and JGL 18047 were found to be the best five genotypes for grain quality parameters.