Large scale characterization of Rice landraces from National Genebank

Under the ICAR-DBT project on “Main Mainstreaming rice landraces diversity in varietal development through genome-wide association studies: A model for large-scale utilization of gene bank collections of rice” a total of 10086 rice landrace germplasm collected from different rice growing areas of India were characterized during Kharif 2020-21 at IARI fields, New Delhi. These accessions are rice landraces collected and conserved in the National Genebank from different rice growing agro-ecogeographical regions of the country and it forms a part of the more than 1 lakh rice accessions conserved at ICAR-NBPGR, New Delhi. These landrace diversities are being utilized for large scale phenotyping and genotyping for the discovery of novel alleles for various biotic, abiotic and nutritional quality traits. Dr. Kuldeep Singh, Director, ICAR-NBPGR and Dr. A.K.Singh, Director IARI are guiding pillars for this mega-project. Heads of the divisions of NBPGR, Dr. Ashok Kumar, Dr. Gurinderjit Randhawa, Dr. Veena Gupta and Dr. Anuradha Agrawal visited field and interacted with project staffs and scientists.

(Source:  Dr Vimala S Devi, NBPGR, New Delhi)