Association between Phenotypic and Genotypic Distance Matrices of Advanced Breeding Lines of Lowland Rice (Oryza sativa L.) from Diverse Parents

Background: The major staple food of the world, rice, is known for preferences in dietary diversification among the communities. Evaluation of advanced breeding lines developed from a set of diverse parents involved in different cross combination facilitates selection of promising genotypes, resource management and planning further breeding activities. Methods: Totally, 22 advanced breeding lines of lowland rice in F7 were evaluated based on agro-morphologically and genotypically with molecular markers. Here we report correspondence between different distance matrices subjected to correlation based on Mantel test. Results: Non significant (p-value > 0.05) correlation was observed between the matrices due to causal factors such as data type, markers used and genetic properties of lines as explained in the text. However, certain promising lines were selected from phenotypic performance as well as molecular fingerprints and grain quality evaluation relative to checks (CAUR1 and Shasarang) with specific context to north eastern hill region.