Investigation of Morphological Traits Related to Yield of Rice (Oryza Sativa L.) Promising Lines

To determine the most important morphological characteristics affecting the yield of rice, experimental farm in 2010 at Sari of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources University based on a randomized complete block design with three replications were conducted. Studied genotypes were included 27 promising lines of rice and two parental varieties of rice, namely Sange Tarom and Daylamani. In this experiment, traits such as plant height, fertile tillers, flag leaf length and width, panicle length, number of primary and secondary spicklets, grain length and width, number of filled grains per panicle and grain yield were studied. Analysis of variance showed that rice genotypes were different (p< 0.01). Line7 and Line17 had the highest yield (7.485 and 6.952 ton/ ha) and 7 lines such as Line10 had the lowest yield (3.477 ton.ha-1) respectively. Correlation analysis showed that the yield negatively correlated with plant height (r = -0.35) and positively correlated with fertile tiller number (r = 0.22). Cluster analysis classified studied rice lines into three groups in which the third group with three lines (lines of 2, 7 and 17) in a separate group from controls parents. These lines had good performance in terms of grain yield and yield components. Mean while, path analysis indicated that fertile tiller had a significant direct (0.394) and indirect (0.41) effects via leaf area on grain yield. Therfore, this trait along with plant height could be recommende for selection of rice promising lines.