Heritability and Character Association among Yield Component Characters and Grain Yield in Rice (Oryza sativa L.)

Morphological characterization of 31 rice breeding lines using 13 agronomic traits was done in field experiment in a Randomized Block Design in the Research farm of Department of Genetics and Plant Breeding, Naini Agricultural Institute, Sam Higginbottom University of Agriculture, Technology and Sciences, Prayagraj, U.P. The goals were to determine the extent of variability among rice lines, the relationship between yield and other traits in order to identify a few traits that could serve as good yield components to improve rice yield, and the heritability of the traits in order to effectively utilise rice lines for breeding purposes. The combined data's correlation coefficient and broad-sense heritability estimations for the 13 features linked to grain yield revealed highly substantial genetic variation (p<0.0001) among the genotypes. Of all the characters evaluated, only harvest index had the highest and significant correlation with grain yield (r=0.660).