9 † Corresponding author © 2017 Conscientia Beam. All Rights Reserved. MULTI-ENVIRONMENT VARIETY TESTING (PRE-MET) FOR IRRIGATED ECOSYSTEM IN RICE (Oryza sativa L.) Md. Maksudul Haque 1+ M Anisuzzaman 2 M.M. Emam Ahmed 3 Partha S Biswas 4 Md. Ansar Ali 5 1 Scientific officer (Golden Rice), Plant Breeding Division, Bangladesh Rice Research Institute, Gazipur, Bangladesh 2 Plant Breeding Division, Bangladesh Rice Research Institute, Gazipur, Bangladesh 3 Scientific officer, Plant Breeding Division, Bangladesh Rice Research Institute, Gazipur, Bangladesh 4 Postdoctoral Fellow - Rice Breeding & Molecular Breeding, Plant Breeding Division, International Rice Research Institute, Los Banos, Philippines 5 Director Research, Bangladesh Rice Research Institute, Gazipur, Bangladesh (+ Corresponding author) ABSTRACT Article History Received: 6 December 2016 Revised: 5 January 2017 Accepted: 18 January 2017 Published: 9 February 2017 Keywords Multi-environment Irrigated ecosystem Rice (Oryza sativa L.) A set of 100 IRRI bred advanced breeding lines were tested at Gazipur (as moderate productive control site) and at Habiganj (as high productive site) following row-column design with 2 replications. The breeding lines were highly variable in days to maturity and plant height but not in grain yield. However the interaction effects between genotype and environment (GXE) were significant for all three traits. At Gazipur, the breeding lines yielded with range between 3.3 to 7.3 t/ha with a growth duration range of 138-154 days, while at Habiganj they yielded 5.1-7.9 t/ha with growth duration of 139-159 days. The highest yielding genotype was IR99092-B-B-78 followed by IR13A390, IR99061-B-B-7, IR14D111, etc at Gazipur, while IR13A390 followed by IR100008-91-B yielded the highest at Habiganj site. Based on yield and growth duration, 22 breeding lines showing better performance at Gazipur, 9 lines at Habiganj and 2 lines for both locations were selected for further evaluation. Contribution/ Originality: Rice is the major staple food for more than half of the world’s population. The study therefore the breeding lines were highly variable in days to maturity and plant height but not in grain yield. However the interaction effects between genotype and environment (GXE) were significant for all three traits. 1. INTRODUCTION Rice (Oryza sativa L.) is the major staple food for more than half of the world’s total population (Pandey et al., 2010) most of whom live in under developed countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. In 2050, the world’s human population is expected to get to over 9 billion—an addition of two billion people to present estimates (Godfray et al., 2010). To assist guarantee universal food safety and keep pace with the rising require for rice, there is a require to raise rice production by 26% by 2035 (FAO, 2009; GRiSP, 2013; Sayer and Cassman, 2013;Fischer et al., 2014). However, agriculture has been facing vast challenges with shortage of land, water and labor availability (Rosegrant and Cai, 2002; Bouman et al. 2007;Lampayan et al., 2015). In addition, agriculture is allied with a number of ecological threats, including climate change, land and water degradation and biodiversity loss (Lobell et al., 2009; Mueller et al., 2012;Phalan et al., 2014). Biological diversity and environmental guilds tend to be much lesser in International Journal of Sustainable Agricultural Research 2017 Vol.4, No.1, pp.9-15 ISSN(e): 2312-6477 ISSN(p): 2313-0393 DOI: 10.18488/journal.70/2017.4.1/70.1.9.15 © 2017 Conscientia Beam. All Rights Reserved.