Agro-morphological and biochemical characterization and principal component analysis for yield and quality characters in fine-scented rice genotypes

Forty-one fine-scented rice genotypes were evaluated for 18 agro-morphological and quality characters for characterization, and 21 quantitative characters were evaluated for principal component analysis in R-studio software. Characterization of agro-morphological traits viz., plant height, days to 50% flowering, panicle length, number of effective tillers per plant, test weight, grain length, grain breadth, grain L: B ratio, kernel length, kernel breadth, kernel dimensions, awns, colour of awns, distribution of awns, and quality traits viz., alkali spreading value, gel consistency, grain aroma, and amylose content showed huge diversity among the genotypes. PCA revealed that PC1 showed the highest amount of variance (32.0%) followed by PC2 (15.7%), PC3 (9.0%), PC4 (8.1%), PC5 (7.8%), PC6 (5.4%) for quantitative characters. Out of 21 principal components, only 6 showed an eigenvalue greater than 1 and contributes about 78.1% total variance Genotypes in PC1 showed higher values for grain L: B ratio and kernel L: B ratio. Similarly, PC2 showed higher variable values for characters like test weight, kernel length, grain length, grain breadth, alkali spreading value, grain yield per plot and amylose content. PC3 for harvest index, panicle length, gel consistency, no. of effective tillers per plant and head rice recovery. PC4 for characters like plant height, kernel breadth and days to 50% flowering. PC5 for characters like kernel elongation ratio, and filled grains per panicle. PC6 for characters like no. of tillers in a square meter and no. of panicles in a square meter. This pre-breeding characterization study may be useful in finding potential genotypes which are having both yield and quality characters which may be useful in breeding for high-yielding varieties with good-quality characters.