Improvement and revival of traditional rice landraces through radiation induced mutation breeding

Traditional rice landraces have several invaluable traits which could be utilized to develop high yielding, climate resilient and nutritionally enriched commercial varieties. However, due to tall plant stature, late maturity duration, susceptible to lodging, grain shattering habit, and low yield potential, these have been marginalised and are at the verge of extinction. Mutation breeding offers simple, cost effective and efficient way to improve one or two major undesirable traits without altering the unique characters of these landraces. BARC, Mumbai and IGKV, Raipur, have undertaken collaborative R&D work for improvement and revival of these landraces through radiation induced mutation breeding. Over 10 years of continuous R&D work, ~100 rice landraces have been undertaken for improvement and many promising mutants have been developed. So far 5 rice mutant varieties (viz. TCDM-1, Vikram-TCR, CG Jawaphool Trombay, TCVM and TCSM) have been released and gazette notified by Government of India for commercial cultivation. Many high yielding and promising mutants are in pipe line and being evaluated at state and national level multi-location trials. Large scale seed production programme for wide dissemination have been undertaken. Ostensibly, this is one of the world's largest comprehensive rice mutation breeding programme being carried out in India. Improved mutant rice landraces/ varieties with high yielding potential are getting wider acceptability among the marginal and conventional farmers and will result in better socio-economic conditions and bring back the traditional wisdom of combating malnutrition and hunger on sustainable basis.