Intra-varietal stability performance of popular rice landrace ‘C14-8’ in the Andaman Islands

The multitude of agronomic merits of a traditionally tall and photosensitive japonica rice landrace C14-8 has enabled its popularity in the tropical Andaman and Nicobar Islands, India. However, we noticed distinct variation for grain husk colour in this culture. Field evaluation of four grain husk color selections over 4 years across three major rice growing islands revealed significant variation for agro-morphological traits studied. In the overall population, harvest index was identified as the potent selectable trait for indirect selection. Through AMMI stability analysis, the environmental, G × E interaction and genotype effects were recorded as 24.4%, 12.5% and 12.3%, respectively. The highest positive genotypic index was recorded at C14-8-11-108 (0.39) followed by C14-8-11-113 (0.29) and C14-8-11-91 (0.20) which also out-yielded the original population by about 20% across years thus indicating the consistency and favorability of these selections under marginal ecosystem. The findings of this paper will be useful for the breeding and conservation perspectives of such unique germplasm having climatically adaptive traits under marginal ecosystems.