A red rice high yielding variety ‘VL Dhan 69’ for cultivation in Northern hills

Abstract

VL Dhan 69 is a red rice variety suitable for cultivation under irrigated transplanted condition of medium elevated hills of Uttarakhand, Sikkim and Union territory of Jammu and Kashmir. This was released by the Central Sub-Committee on Crop Standards Notification and Release of Variety for Agricultural Crops and notified by the Central Seed Committee vide notification number S.O.8(E) dated the 24th December, 2021. This variety was developed by crossing between VL 10689 and UPRI2005-15 at ICARVivekananda Parvatiya Krishi Anusandhan Sansthan (VPKAS) Almora, Uttarakhand. It has unique decorticated grain colour (reddish brown) which may fetch higher price in the market compare to normal rice. This variety has semi-erect, semi-dwarf and non-lodging plant type, green basal leaf sheath colour, erect to semi erect flag leaf, semi-erect, semi-straight and well exerted panicle, awnless grains and straw apiculus colour. VL Dhan 69 was found promising, stable and shown significant yield superiority over the checks. It recorded grain yield 4,255 kg/ha in medium hill on an average of three years of testing as compare to national check, Vivek Dhan 62 (3,010 kg/ha); regional check, VL Dhan 65 (3,599 kg/ha) & Local check (2,769 kg/ha) with yield advantage of 41.37, 18.22 and 53.65 per cent, respectively. It has very good quality characteristics viz., hulling 79.9%, milling 69.1%, head rice recovery 55.4%, intermediate ASV (5.0) and amylose content 26.78%, gel consistency (23mm), grain chalkiness is very occasionally present. It has short bold grain with kernel length (5.35mm), kernel breadth (2.62mm) and L/B ratio (2.04). This variety showed moderate resistance against leaf blast, neck blast, brown spot and sheath rot. Wide spread and cultivation of this variety would help in yield stabilization of hill farmers and fulfill the urgent requirement of varietal diversification in Northern Hill Zone (NHZ).