A New High Yielding and Lodging-Tolerant Rice Cultivar, “Woncheongbyeo” Mutated from Chucheongbyeo

Abstract

“Woncheongbyeo” is a new japonica rice (Oryza sativa L.) cultivar developed by mutation techniques from Chu-cheongbyeo. Chucheongbyeo seeds were irradiated with 300 Gy gama ray (83.3 rad/min) emitted from 60Co at a radiation facil-ity of the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI) in 1992. Compared to Chucheongbyeo, “Woncheongbyeo” has ashort stature as 64 cm in culm length, resistance to lodging and 3-days-earlier heading date. It has considerably erect pubescentleaf blades and a tough culm with a good canopy architecture. “Woncheongbyeo” has similar tillers per hill, panicle length, and alittle bit higher ripened grain ratio, but more spikelets per panicle than Chucheongbyeo does. It is resistant to blast and leaf blightendosperm without a white center and a white belly, and its palatability of cooked rice is excellent. The new cultivar showed 72.0in taste value by Toyo-midometer, 9.4% and 19.4% in protein and amylose content, respectively. The yield performance of“Woncheongbyeo” was about 5.62 MT/ha, which is by 5.7% higher than that of Chucheongbyeo in the local adaptability trials at3 sites during 1999~2000. It could be highly adaptable to the northern plain areas or the middle and southern mid-mountainousareas of Korea.