Classification is of fundamental importance in the utilization of genetic resources. The rice cultivars of Asia including the "Javanica" and other ecotypes of Morinaga (1968) can be classified into two subspecies of Oryza sativa L., i.e., subsp. hsien Ting and subsp. keng Ting (Cheng et al. 1984). To reconfirm this assertion, a total of 209 rice cultivars from various Asian countries situated between Burma and Iran, which were considered as atypical by Glaszmann (1984), were made available through the courtesy of IRRI and were used for this study. They were evaluated by using our criteria based on six characters listed in Table 1. The sum of scores for the six characters was used for classification as follows: Varieties with a score sum <8 were considered as hsein (H), 9-13 mostly as hsien-cline (H'), 14-17 mostly as keng-cline (K'), and >16 as keng (K).
Table 1. Six characters and their scores used for classification.
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Character Score/character state
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0 1 2 3 4
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Glume hairiness Short, Short, less Nearly Long, Long
regular regular glabrous irregular overlapped
Phenol reaction Dark Light Very light Trace None
Interval between 1st
and 2nd node of 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5
panicle axis, cm
Glume color Greenish Whitish Yellowish Light Green
at heading white green green green
Leaf pubescence Very dense Dense Medium Few No
Length-width ratio 4.0 3.5 3.0 2.5 2.0
of spikelets
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On the basis of this analysis, 97 of the 209 atypical varieties were
classified as hsien (H), 55 as keng (K). Of the rest, 34 were classified as
hsien-cline (H') and 23 as keng-cline (K'). To evaluate the relative magnitude
of differences between the four types, the mean score-values of respective
characters for the four types were subjected to analysis of variance (Table
2). The results showed that the differences between H' and K' were not
significant while those between H and H', as well as those between K and K',
were significant.Table 2. analysis of variance of mean character scores for variety-groups, H, H',K', and K.
========================================================== Variance due to df MS ========================================================== Pooled analysis Variety-group 3 4.60** Character 5 0.231 Interaction 15 0.376 First partition K-H 1 13.25** K'-H' 1 0.499 (K-K')-(H'-H) 1 0.037 Interaction 15 0.376 Second partition (K+K')-(H+H') 1 9.45** K-K' 1 1.77* H'-H 1 2.57* Interaction 15 0.376 ==========================================================*,** Significant at 5% and 1% levels, respectively.
The taxonomic distances (Sokal and Sneath 1963) based on the score-values were
also computed. The distance was greatest between H and K (2.45), followed by
that between H and K' (1.51) and that between H' and K (1.46), while that
between H' and K' was smallest (0.59). These data show that a continuous array
of intergrades occurs between the two subspecies, hsien and keng, but a
majority of varieties can be regarded as belonging to either of the two
subspecies.
These observations based on six characters and those by Glaszmann based on isozyme variations appear to agree in recognizing that varieites from high altitude, many of upland varieties, so-called the Bulus from Java, and many of the "Sadri" and "Basmati" varieties, belong to subsp. keng. Most of varieties with sickle-shaped grain were keng or keng-cline types although their grain shape was quite slender.
References
Cheng, K.S., X. K. Wang, J.W. Zhou, Y.X. Lu, J. Lou and N.W. Huang, 1984. Studies on indigenous rices in Yunnan and their utilization, II. A revised classification of Asian cultivated rice (in Chinese) Acta Agronomica Sinica 10:271-280.
Glaszmann, J.C. 1984. The overall genetic organization of Oryza sativa L. as perceived through isozyme study. IRRI Seminar paper (mimeogr.).
Morinaga, T. 1968. Origina and geographical distribution of Japanese rice. JARQ 3:1-15.
Sokal, R.R. and P.H.A. Sneath 1963. Principles of Numerical Taxonomy. Freeman, San Francisco.