Drought tolerant rice breeding lines developed for rainfed lowland areas

Drought is a major problem in rice production in rainfed areas. Climate change has exacerbated the negative effect of drought on the sustainability of rice production. Development of drought tolerant rice varieties is important strategy to minimize rice yield losses in drought prone areas. This study aimed to determine drought tolerance of twenty-five advanced rice breeding lines under artificial drought environment and to evaluate their agronomic performance in rainfed lowland rice areas. Evaluation of drought tolerance was carried out at seedling stage in greenhouse. Yield trial was conducted in rainfed rice area in Indramayu district, West Java province, during wet season 2017-2018. The trial was designed in randomized complete block design with four replications. Result from this study indicated a variation in drought tolerance of twenty-five breeding lines. Two lines showed highly tolerant response to drought in seedling stage namely B15231-MR-10-1 and B15143C-TGB-12. The grain yield of highly drought tolerant rice line B15231-MR-10-1 (4.81 t ha(-1)) was comparable to popular rice varieties Situ Bagendit (4.56 t ha(-1)) and Ciherang (5.09 t ha(-1)). Drought tolerant rice breeding lines identified from this study have potential to be adopted by farmers in drought prone rainfed areas as an adaptation strategy to the impact of climate change.