ASSESSMENT OF GENETIC VARIABILITY AMONG YIELD RELATED TRAITS IN SOME LOCAL RICE (ORYZA SATIVA L.) CULTIVARS IN NIGERIA

This study was carried out to evaluate the genetic variability among yield and yield related traits in some local rice (Oryza sativa L.) cultivars in Nigeria. The study was conducted at the Botanical Garden, Department of Botany, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. The seed of the rice genotypes were obtained from local farmers across the nineteen northern states of Nigeria. The experiment was laid out in Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD) with three replications. Agronomic traits data were taken according to International Rice Research Institute Standard evaluation system. Analysis of Variance showed highly significant variation (p≤0.001) among the local rice accessions for all the agro-morphological and yield-related traits under study. A dendrogram by Unweighted Pair Group Method with Arithmetic Mean (UPGMA) grouped the rice cultivars into four cluster groups at 45.0% similarity coefficient. Principal Components (PC) analysis indicated that the first three components accounted for 80.07% of total variation. The PC1 showed 31.61%, while PC2 and PC3 exhibited 25.78 and 22.68% variability respectively among the accessions for the traits under study. The rice landraces from savanna regions of Nigeria possess enough genetic variability, this could be utilized for selection of parental genotypes for improvement by rice breeding programmes.