Executive Summary : | Rice is the staple and most cultivated crop in Northeast India. In Manipur, rice is the dominant kharif crop contributing 98 percent of total food grain production in the state, according to the Economic Survey (2016-2017). Even though, the crop’s productivity is much higher than the national level, its production falls short to meet the demand in the state thus importing rice every year. Manipur in India is endowed with rich soil fertility and biodiversity. About 80% of the state population depends on agriculture for livelihood. However, agriculture sector in Manipur is facing the consequences of climate change. Climate change is a reality and the state is also experiencing more erratic rainfall and thus reduction in crop yields in last few decades. More than 20% of Manipur's total agriculture area (1.95 lakh hectare), has been affected by floods in 2015, 2017, 2018, 2020. Moreover, the state had declared drought in 2019 and a drought-like situation every year, even currently in kharif 2022. Thus, it is important to understand the challenges faced by farmers in cultivating rice, being the most dominant crop, to ensure a sustainable production in the state. Prioritization of farmer’s problems make easier to target and fix the issues. The climate smart varieties developed in other part of the country are not accepted in Northeastern India including Manipur due to high amylose content. The region has a palate of sticky rice with lower amylose, as our all varieties are. So, it is pertinent to develop climate resilient varieties specific to this region, as there is not a single climate smart variety available. Thus, the proposed project intends to improve popular rice varieties of the region, by introgressing and pyramiding drought (qDTY1.1+qDTY2.1+qDTY3.1) and submergence (Sub1) tolerant genes/QTL though marker assisted backcrossing approach to develop climate-resilient high yielding varieties of the Northeastern region of the country. Hypothesis/model: 1. Pyramiding of drought QTLs will improve its tolerance to drought in the newly developed varieties 2. Introgression of Sub1 gene will make the plant survive upto 2 weeks of submergence. 3. The improved varieties will decrease the loss in crop productivity due to abiotic stresses, drought and flood. The strategy to be followed is marker assisted backcross breeding. The recipient parents RC Maniphou 13 and Thoibiphou are two popular rice varieties of the region. The donor parent, CR Dhan 801 is a climate-smart rice variety released by NRRI, Cuttack. It has drought and submergence tolerance genes/QTLs and yields 6.3 t/ha under normal condition. The crossing of parents has been initiated during kharif 2022. Two cropping per year will be attempted. Two backcrossing will be made to have higher recovery of background genome of recipient parents. The highly genome recovered lines would be tested for grain quality and agronomic traits, and phenotypic screening for submergence and drought tolerance. |