Estimation of genetic parameters for physico-chemical and nutritional traits in rice

Variability and heritability studies in seven parents and their hybrids revealed the existence of significant differences for all the characteristics and indicated wide variability among the genotypes. In general, the parents exhibited high mean values for most of the quality traits studied, suggesting that parents were superior in quality than the hybrids. The heritability estimates were high which ranged from 88.00 to 99.10. Low to moderate estimates of variability high heritability and low to high genetic advance for all the quality traits indicated the preponderance of both additive and non additive gene effects in conditioning these traits. Variability was found high for iron content, while it was low for hulling percent in the genotypes under study. High heritability along with low genetic advance was exhibited for hulling percent only indicating that this traits was under the influence of environment. Remaining traits exhibited high heritability along with moderate to high genetic advance suggesting that these characters could be of great importance for selecting better genotypes in rice improvement programmes.