Pyramid Breeding Strategy for Integration of Multiple Traits for High Yield, Earliness, Short Stature and extra-Long Grain to Evolve a New Variety

Multiple trait integration (MTI)is a multi-step process involving introgression of genes for some valueadded traits (e.g. yield, earliness, shirt stature, cooking quality traits and resistance to insect pests and diseases)into one line throughtrait pyramiding. From a breeding standpoint, MTI involves parallelmultiple crosses, genes introgression, trait pyramiding, fixation, and testing. Along with high yield and excellent cooking, traits such as early maturing for timely harvesting for wheat sowing and short stature to reduce losses due to lodging are also very important in case of rice. Therefore, a variety “Kissan Basmati” was developed at Rice Research Institute, Kala Shah Kaku in Punjab-Pakistan by pyramiding these traits for successful implementation of MIT and integration of useful morphological and physiological characters into same line. It was evolved by hybridizing PS-2 having traits for high yield and excellent cooking quality with another uniform line 99417 (PK9505) having pyramided stable genes for earliness, short stature and extra-long grain length. The resultant F1 was backcrossed with recurrent parent 99417 (PK9505) to make BC1F1. Afterwards pedigree method of selection was continued upto BC1F4 generation from 2007 to 2010 until reached genetic stability. It is high yielding, stiff stemmed, short stature and extra-long grain rice variety which is suitable for parboiled and steam rice. Kissan Basmati is two weeks earlier than other cultivated varieties, hence requires less water due to the shorter life cycle. The new variety, Kissan Basmati gave 9.3%, 15% and 3.8% higher paddy yield than commercial variety Super Basmati, Basmati 515 and PS-2, respectively on the basis of its yield performance in observational plot, station yield trials, regional adaptability yield trials and national uniform rice yield trials (NURYT). The quality characteristics like grain length, head rice recovery and cooked grain length of Kissan Basmati are also better than Super Basmati, Basmati 515 and PS 2.

Keywords: Rice, trait pyramiding, extra-long rice varieties, parboiled and steam rice, early maturing, water use efficiency.