Genetic diversity and yield performance among T. Aman rice (Oryza sativa L.) landraces in Barishal region of Bangladesh

Understanding genetic diversity of rice helps to improve its yield. Although many landraces of rice are grown in the coastal area of Bangladesh, their diversity has not been studied. Here, we report a comparison of 163 landraces of T. Aman rice. Data on different agronomic characters were collected while analysis of variance (ANOVA), Pearson’s regression, principal component analysis (PCA) and cluster analysis were performed. In addition, yield of local landraces was compared to modern cultivars using meta-analysis. Our results showed that the yield of local rice of this study was higher than both HYV and local rice grown in the farmers’ field. Furthermore, landraces with longer plant height and heavier grain provided significantly higher yield. According to PCA, the highest contributing variables were the number of tillers per hill and plant height. Canonical variate analysis revealed that plant height and grain length–breadth ratio were major contributors in creating divergence. In the generalized distance (D2) and cluster analysis, landraces were split into five diverse clusters with many sub-clusters. Considering overall diversity pattern, it is evident that a good number of T. Aman rice landraces can be used in future improvement programs for assembling many beneficial traits and increasing yield of rice.