The present investigation was carried out during kharief- 2005 at the Research Farm, Division of Plant Breeding and Genetics, SKUAST-Jammu, Main Campus Chatha. The experimental material for the present investigation comprised of sixteen genotypes of rice (Oryza sativa L.) grown in a randomized block design with three replications. The study revealed that genotypes differed significantly among themselves for all the characters viz., morpho-physiological, biochemical, yield and yield attributing traits. A wide range of phenotypic variability was observed in most of the characters but was quite high for plant height, number of productivity tillers, harvest index, flag leaf area, crop growth rate (CGR) and net assimilation rate (NAR). The phenotypic and genotypic coefficients of variation revealed that there was good agreement between these two parameters. A number of characters such as flag leaf area, harvest index, grain yield, 1000 grain weight, peroxidase, leaf area duration (LAD) and -amylase showed high genotypic coefficient of variation as compared to others. Apart from showing high genetic variability plant traits viz., plant height, flag leaf area, 1000-grain weight, grain yield, days to 50% flowering, kernel density, biomass yield, number of productive tillers, harvest index, CGR, RGR, NAR, LAD, peroxidase and -amylase showed moderate to high heritability coupled with moderate to high genetics advance. Mahalonabis’s D2-statistic analysis revealed considerable amount of diversity in the material. Sixteen genotypes were grouped into six heterogenous clusters. Among these clusters, clusters B and cluster C had maximum number of genotypes (five each). The maximum average inter-cluster distance was recorded between cluster C and cluster F and minimum between cluster E and cluster F. Hence the selected material could be further utilized for future breeding programme
