Ecology, Environment and Conservation Paper

STANDARD SEED BOX SCREENING FOR BROWN PLANT HOPPER RESISTANCE AND AGRO-MORPHOLOGICAL EVALUATION OF ADVANCED BREEDING LINES OF RICE (ORYZA SATIVA L.)

Shoukat A. Rather, Indra Deo, Azad Hussain Khan, Kuldeep Kumar, Sudhir Kumar, Neeraj Singh and Gouri Shankar Panda

Abstract

Brown plant hopper (BPH) is as well important destructive pest causing significant yield losses in rice. The present investigation encompassing 44 advanced rice lines (F5 - F7 generation) was carried out to evaluate them for BPH resistance using standard seed box screening technique under controlled conditions. The results revealed that only eight lines were moderately susceptible for BPH, whereas, the rest were found susceptible. Among the stable lines, MRST 3 and PHS 29 were found resistant showing a score of less than 3. TN 1 was found highly susceptible to the BPH damage. In addition to this, the lines were also evaluated for various agro-morphological traits under natural conditions. Four genotypes UPR 3926-12-1-1, UPRI 2013-1, UPRI-2013-5 and UPR 3826-3-1-1-1 surpassed the high yielding check (Govind) significantly. The results showed that an effective tiller per plant is an important yield contributing character with correlation coefficient of 0.4. Whereas, the early maturity that is, lesser days taken to reach flowering was found negatively correlated with grain yield.