Exploration of traditional rice (Oryza sativa L.) land races: Scope for the future sustainable food production

Abstract

Traditional landraces have more complex genetic backgrounds, abundant genetic diversity and heterogenecity, as well as strong adaptability to the environment and are the primary source an excellent resistance genes donors for various important pest and diseases. They provide new alleles for the improvement of commercially valuable traits in rice. Global climate change emphasizes the need to use better adapted cultivars of the main crops and traditional landraces as potential donors of useful genes. Traditional rice landraces are pest and disease resistance, and also resistance or tolerance to drought, water logging and flood situation. The traditional rice landraces are being gradually replaced by the incorporation of modern rice cultivars, thereby threatening the existence of many invaluable traits present in such local varieties. A large number of landraces of rice have disappeared from the irrigated field since the adoption of high yielding varieties (HYVs).Existing indigenous traditional rice can play an important role in the development of sustainable agriculture and also valuable for agronomical, social and cultural practices. Conventional breeding techniques are not alone to tap the genetic potential of rice landraces for commercial varietal improvement programme in rice. Molecular breeding programme is highly helpful into the breeders to elucidate the novel genes and QTLs from traditional rice landraces. These genes and QTLS will be introgressed into commercial rice verities through marker aided selection and using other biotechnological tools. This paper reviews the research findings related to improvement in yield, biotic and abiotic stress tolerance in traditional rice landraces.