Diversity of native rice (Oryza Poaceae:) species of Costa Rica

We found several populations of wild Oryza species in the lowlands of Costa Rica. The plants showed extensive morphological variation, suggesting the presence of several species. In the morphologic study, 33 traits were scored for plants of all the species. A principal component analysis revealed the significant morphological separation of the different species. The analyses indicated that there are three species, O. grandi­glumis, O. latifolia and O. glumaepatula. Two putative hybrid types were found, both significantly differing in their morphology from the known species and intermediate at several traits. O. grandi­glumis is a new record for Costa Rican flora. Its main population is located in Caño Negro Wildlife Refuge, Los Chiles, Alajuela. O. latifolia is distributed throughout the lowlands of the country and the plants of the Atlantic slope are significantly bigger in general habit than those of the Guanacaste area. During this study a population of O. glumaepatula of hundreds of thousands of plants was discovered in the Medio Queso River wetland, Los Chiles, Alajuela. This population is the most important source of genes for cultivar's improvement from the primary gene pool of rice in Costa Rica. The small ligule and the wide flag leaf characteristic of the two CCDD species separated them from the AA diploid O. glumaepatula. Seed size, ligule size, number of branches in the panicle, plant height and sterile lemma length are all bigger in O. grandi­glumis, and influenced the second factor that separated the CCDD species in two discrete clusters. The species found offer great possibilities for the improvement of rice cultivars and they should be thoroughly studied and appropriately protected.