Estimation of heritability and genetic advance for screening some rice genotypes at salt stress conditions

The development of high yielding rice cultivars is a major objective in breeding programs. This study was conducted at greenhouse and environmental stress laboratory of Sari Agricultural Science and Natural Resources University (Iran) during 2010. 18 diverse rice genotypes were used in this experiment. These genotypes exposed to 3 salt stress treatments in three replicates. Rice plants were exposed to salinity treatments four weeks after transplanting in vegetative stage. The treatments were including three solutions of NaCl with different salinity levels (3, 6 and 8 dS/m). Finally, broad sense heritability and genetic advance were calculated by formula. Genotypes of 3, 13, 7, 17 and 2 in all salt stress levels had favorable response against salt stress conditions based on estimated parameters and can be used as tolerant genotypes in future breeding programs. Heritability estimates have been understood to be useful in indicating the relative value of selection based on phenotypic expression of different characters. High heritability estimates associated with high genetic advance were obtained in height (x1), root dry weight (x6) and shoot length (x2) characters. Therefore selection for these characters would be more effective because it has high heritability and genetic advance. On the basis of the results obtained in the present study it can be concluded that the range of variability was quite considerable for almost all studied characters among different genotypes.