Effect of drought on yield and drought susceptibility index for quality characters of promising rice genotypes

Twenty-four promising drought tolerant genotypes of IRRI and different parts of India were evaluated for genetic variability and drought susceptibility index (DSI) for 12 quality characters and grain yield under irrigated (E1) and drought (E2) conditions. In the present study differences among the genotypes are highly significant for all the characters; between the environments head rice recovery, alkali spreading value, water uptake, kernel length after cooking and yield were significant, while genotype × environment interaction was only significant for hulling, milling, head rice recovery and water uptake. Head rice recovery, alkali spreading value, water uptake and amylose content were observed to be governed by additive gene action under both the environments. Grain yield was positively correlated with kernel width and amylose content under stress environment while, kernel width was positively correlated with hulling and milling and kernel length was correlated with amylose content. The path coefficient analysis revealed that only kernel width in both the environments and amylose content in E2 had positive direct effect on yield. Most of the genotypes expressed low DSI value (