Indica rice varietal development in Pakistan: an overview

Abstract

Pakistan is well known for its basmati rice with long grain and aroma, as well as for non-basmati indica varieties; however average yield is lower as compared with other countries. Besides, cultural practices, the main reason for low productivity in Pakistan is that, local varieties are susceptible to different biotic and abiotic factors like insect pests, diseases, drought, and salinity. Different approaches have been undertaken in Pakistan to tackle these problems through traditional breeding of selection and crossing, mutation breeding, somaclonal variation as well as plant transformation studies in recent past. For variety development, the most successful examples arose from traditional breeding that produced famous basmati varieties like Basmati 370, Basmati 385 and Super basmati, and nonbasmati varieties such as IRRI-6, DR-82, DR-83, DR-92, Swat-I and Swat-II, which earn a significant share of foreign exchange every year. Six varieties have also been developed through mutation breeding, and one through exploitation of somaclonal variation but their contribution to the national economy is not significant. On the other hand, no variety has been registered as commercial by plant transformation groups. This review discusses the problems and prospects of rice breeding with special emphasis on basmati rice in Pakistan particularly in Pakistani Punjab (a major producing area), as well as focuses on future research programs.

Natural variations in the promoter of OsSWEET13 and OsSWEET14 expand the range of resistance against Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzae

“…In the second phase of mining, only accessions with SNP/Indels in the predicted EBE were retained. In addition, selected lines with desirable SNP/Indels from the Pakistani aromatic rice breeding program were also analyzed [ 29 ]. The Rice SNP-seek database was used to assess the presence of Xa4 , xa5 , Xa7 , xa13 , and Xa21 in selected accessions [ 30 – 33 ].…”

Nitrogen Use and Crop Performance of Rice under Aerobic Conditions in a Semiarid Subtropical Environment

“…It is a popular coarse‐grain cultivar among farmers. It was released in 1971 for general cultivation in Pakistan (Bashir et al, 2007). The RSP 1 genotype (DM64198) is a mutant of the aromatic lowland classic cultivar Basmati‐385.…”

Farmers’ views on the future prospects of aerobic rice culture in Pakistan

“…Zone-III is the west bank of river Indus with an arid, sub-tropical climate and 100 mm rainfall. Zone-IV is the Indus delta with an arid tropical marine climate (Salim et al, 2003;Bashir et al, 2007).…”