Multi-environment testing revealed the effect of yield genes on the grain yield stability in diverse rice germplasm

Diverse rice germplasm comprising 112 genotypes was evaluated for yield traits across three environments. Pooled and environmentwise analysis of variance revealed heterogeneity in the data and significant environment interactions for all the yield traits. As per AMMI (additive main effects and multiplicative interaction) and GGE (genotype and genotype x environment interaction) biplots, the influence of environment was significant and varying on all the component yield traits including grain yield and was not significant in case of flowering date. Dry season at Maruteru in 2014–15 (E1) was the most discriminative and representative environment for favourable plant growth in terms of plant height, panicle number and panicle length. None of the environments represented ideal environment for the favourable expression of grain number while all the environments were equally informative for thousand grain weight and grain yield. Panicle number, grain number and thousand grain weight were contributing to grain yield across the environments. Three genotypes Panthdhan 12, Konark and Udaygiri were the most stable genotypes for grain yield with favourable combination of associated yield genes for all the traits, viz. 1000 grain weight, the number of grains per panicle, the number of filled grains per panicle, productive tillers and plant height with higher yield, and grouped in one cluster. Genotyping using previously reported markers revealed that favourable alleles of yield genes associated with the number of productive tillers were predominantly found followed by alleles for the number of grains/filled grains per panicle correlating with the superior phenotypic value of the respective trait. The information on association of yield stability with reported yield genes from this study is useful in marker-assisted breeding studies for yield improvement and can be confirmed with various sets of genotypes under multi-environment testing. The identified superior genotypes are potential components in future breeding programmes and the development of stable adaptable varieties. The present study suggests that yield stability could be effectively achieved with targeted improvement of component yield traits associated with favourable alleles.