Abstract:
Hybrid rice technology is one of the good options to enhance the productivity of rice. However,
identification of locally adaptable maintainers and restorers is important to develop well adoptive
hybrid rice varieties. Therefore, an experiment was conducted with the objective to identify the
restorers and potential maintainers to develop (CMS) lines in order to use them as parents for future
hybrid rice programme. The experiment was conducted at the Rice Research and Development
Institute, Batalagoda, Sri Lanka in Maha 2016/17 and Yala 2017 season.147 crosses were
produced by using 29 CMS lines crossing with 58 elite inbred lines in Maha 2016/17. F1 hybrids
were field evaluated in test cross nursery in Yala 2017. All F1 hybrids and respective male parents
were planted on progeny basis in a test cross nursery. Other agronomical practices were conducted
according to the Department of Agriculture (DOA) recommendation. Pollen fertility/sterility of the
F1 hybrids was observed via light microscope after staining them with I-KI solution. 56 pollen fertile
F1 crosses were identified having >81% pollen fertility and 31 male parents were selected for
restoration ability. Four pollen sterile F1 combinations were identified and they showed >98.6%
pollen sterility and the pollen parents in these crosses were selected for maintaining ability (RES
256) and advanced to backcross breeding programme to develop new CMS lines.
