Performance of selected aerobic rice varieties cultivated under local condition

Aerobic rice cultivation is a new concept of growing rice with supplemental irrigation, without the necessity for standing water in the field. IRRI has developed aerobic rice varieties and MARDI has requested some of these planting materials to be tested in the local environment. The main aim of the study was to select suitable varieties from the foreign introduction and evaluate their growth and yield performance under local aerobic condition. Variety AERON 1/05 showed superior in some yield component characteristics such as longer panicle, higher number of rachis, higher yield and heavier grains. However, this variety has no significant difference in the number of primary branches compared to AERON 49/05. All the International Network for Genetic Evaluation of Rice (INGER) varieties showed no significant difference in the number of filled grains but they were able to have significantly higher filled grains than the control varieties (MR 219, MRQ 50 and MRQ 74). Correlation analysis showed that 1000-grain weight contributed positively to the yield of the control and varieties from the INGER. Traits that are positively correlated with yield improvement of aerobic rice are very beneficial and these useful traits must be incorporated to enhance the yield of new aerobic rice varieties