NilanjayaRS, ASWATHY NAIR2024-06-242024-06-242023M/PBG/202/2021-22https://krishikosh.egranth.ac.in/handle/1/5810210793The present investigation was undertaken with thirty five rice genotype which were presumed to be biofortified to study the variability and genetic parameter in addition to character association, path effects for yield and quality parameter, genetic divergence study among the genotypes and to evaluate genetic diversity in grain Zinc content using microsatellite spanning primers in the representative population. This study involved ten quantitative characters viz. Plant height, Panicle length, Days to 50% flowering, Days to physiological maturity, No: of panicles per plant, Spikelet fertility, 1000 grain weight, No: of grains per panicle, Zinc content in rice grains, Grain yield per plant. The results have revealed high phenotypic and genotypic coefficient of variation for Grains per panicle, high heritability coupled with genetic advance as per cent of mean for traits like plant height, Days to 50% flowering, Days to physiological maturity, No. of panicles per plant, spikelet fertility,1000 grain weight, No. of grains per panicle, zinc content in rice grains, grain yield per plant. The results of character association revealed that No. of panicles per plant, Spikelet fertility, No. of grains per panicle and 1000 grain weight were positively and significantly associated with grain yield per plant. So indirect selection of these trait would be fruitful. Path coefficient analysis showed that traits like No. of panicles per plant, Spikelet fertility, No. of grains per panicle, 1000 grain weight, and zinc content in rice grains exhibited positive direct effects on grain yield per plant indicating the effectiveness of these traits in improvement of grain yield per plant towards development of high yielding genotypes with good nutritional quality. The current study assess genetic diversity and to determine the Zn value by Atomic absorption spectrometry. Zinco rice and R-RGY-MH-113 had highest zinc value of respectively. Based on the tocher method shown that the total genotypes are clustered into nine clusters in which cluster IV had the maximum genotypes followed by cluster I and cluster II. The inter cluster distance, the maximum inter cluster distance was observed between cluster VIII and cluster IX followed by cluster V and cluster IX. Therefore, it was concluded that diverged genotypes from these groups can be utilized as better parents for future breeding programmes. Thirteen microsatellite spanning primers were used for the amplification. Except OsYSL6K all the other primers resulted in successful amplification. A total of 49 allelic variants were amplified using the above mentioned primers in which four primer viz. OsZIP7K, OsYSL2K, OsNRAMP7K and OsNACK amplified a single unique allele each and the primer OsZIP5K produced two unique alleles, typically 4.08 alleles per locus, with a range of 1to 6 alleles per primer. The examined rice genotypes are clustered into four broad clusters with a clear differentiation of genotypes into low, moderate and high concentration of grain zinc in them.EnglishThesis