Morphological Diversity Analysis of Rice Landraces in Benguet

Abstract

The research was conducted to: collect germplasm of rice landraces in Benguet; to characterize germplasm of collected rice landraces in Benguet; to determine diversity in the collections and relationships among the collected rice landraces, and; to maintain a gene bank of collected rice landraces.

Germplasm collection, morphological characterization, diversity and cluster analysis, and bi-plot analysis were performed on 157 rice landraces collected from the 12 municipalities of Benguet.

Most of the rice landraces were collected from Kibungan, Kapangan, and Bakun. The grain characterization of the rice plants revealed that Sabul and Tudoy had desirable characters on high yield and pest resistance. Pitkikil and Mayok, on the other hand, exhibited long roots and high number of tillers.

A low mean diversity index was observed in both the grain and vegetative characters of the rice landraces indicating homogeneity among the landraces collected.

Cluster and bi-plot analysis on grain characters revealed seven clusters. Cluster seven appears to be associated with high yield. In addition, the same analysis on vegetative characters resulted in three clusters with cluster three appearing to be associated with long roots.