Abstract

Traditional landraces and basmati lines are useful pool of important traits and need to be analyzed for hybrid breeding utilization in rice. Furthermore, released cultivars have good agronomic characters which can be used directly in the hybrid breeding program. A study was conducted on 80 landraces, 5 basmati lines and 36 cultivars to characterize them, for fertility restoration traits and identification of prospective restorers and maintainers for Cytoplasmic Male Sterility (CMS) wild abortive line and IR58025A. The experiment was laid out in a randomized complete block design with two replications consisting of F₁ seeds along with their parents. Observations on spikelet fertility were carried out for the identification of restorers and maintainer lines. Out of the 121 genotypes analyzed, majority of the lines were either partial maintainers or partial restorers and 18 genotypes behaved as restorers while 16 as maintainers. These restorers can be used as male parents or to develop diverse restorers, while maintainers could be utilized for developing new CMS lines.

Key words: Hybrid rice, cytoplasmic male sterility, spikelet fertility, restorers, maintainers.