Diversity of Agronomic Characteristics of North Korean Rice Cultivars

Abstract

The main problem of the Korean rice improvement program is narrow genetic background of genepool used as crosingparents. Although some successes have been reported for introduction of genes from the germplasm of distant genetic relationshipsuch as indica cultivars, the dificulties of wide hybridization including genetic drag of undesirable genes stil remain. Ninety-nineNorth Korean rice cultivars were collected and their morphological and agronomic performances such as heading date were eval-uated. The genetic relationships between these germplasm and South Korean cultivars was analyzed by DNA fingerprinting. Asexpected, field observation for morphological characters showed that two groups of ecotypes, Japonica and Tongil-type existedwhich was confirmed by DNA fingerprinting. The overall agronomic performance of the North Korean cultivars were inferior toSouth Korean cultivars with a few exceptions. The main flaws of the North Korean cultivars were poor grain quality and suscep-tibility to major diseases in South Korea. DNA fingerprinting revealed close genetic relationship between North and South Koreancultivars, implying easy introduction of the desirable traits, such as earlines in heading.