Morphometric and Genetic Diversity of Folk Rice Varieties of West Bengal

Abstract

West Bengal has rich rice genetic wealth. Different folk rice varieties of West Bengal have different grain morphological characteristics. The genetic diversity embedded within these folk rice varieties are the genetic resources of the rice crop that sustain the world's growing population. But this genetic wealth of folk rice is depleted due to the onslaught of the high-yielding varieties (HYVs) and negligence. Therefore, these folk rice varieties are documented and characterized towards conservation of these varieties. These folk rice varieties were collected from different parts of West Bengal. Characterization was done following the Standard Evaluation System (SES) for rice developed by the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) and other numerical taxonomical methods. This baseline agro-morphological data will be helpful to evaluate and improve the genetic diversity among the folk varieties of West Bengal.