Phenotypic Screening of F4 Breeding Lines against Bacterial Blight Disease in Rice

Biotic stresses are major threat to rice production. Among biotic stresses, bacterial leaf blight is one of the major diseases affecting rice grain production in rice growing areas. Present investigation was conducted to evaluate phenotypic effect of 50 breeding lines from a cross (Pranahitha//ISM/MTU1010) in glass house at Regional Agricultural Research Station, Jagtial by inoculating Bacterial leaf blight culture (DX-020) by leaf clipping method. Out of these 50 F4 lines evaluated, twenty nine breeding lines showed resistant reaction with disease score of 1. Eleven lines showed moderately resistant reaction with disease score 3. Twenty nine breeding lines that were resistant with disease score 1, had excellent grain yield. Hence, these lines can be advanced to further generations. Thus the present study has demonstrated that phenotypic selection is successful in the glass house and these breeding lines with higher yield levels are expected to perform better in the field trials and further in the farmers fields with the good level of bacterial blight resistance.