Study on the Morphological Characteristics of Selected Indigenous Paddy Varieties of Wayanad District of Kerala

Among agricultural crops rice assumes paramount importance because it forms the staple food of half of the world's population. Importance of the crop in maintaining ecological balance and water recharging is also well known. There was a well‐developed traditional system of paddy cultivation in India. With the advent of improved varieties, chemical fertilizers and pesticides the cultivation system also underwent tremendous changes over years. Farmers started to ignore traditional varieties and went behind the latest high yielding varieties and consequently in a high level use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Most of the traditional rice varieties are getting lost and a considerable number of them became extinct. Lack of scientific data on varietal characters of the crop is the major hurdle for correct identification of the varieties and their conservation. In this context studies were conducted on the morphological characteristics of ten selected traditional paddy varieties of Wayanad grown in farmer's field under uniform management practices during the Kharif season of 2012‐13. The observations were recorded following the "Standard Evaluation System for Rice" prescribed by IRRI (1996). The traditional rice varieties revealed low variability with respect to most of the qualitative characters. Significant variations were observed in the case of quantitative characters like seedling height, days to heading, culm length and panicle length.