Int.J.Curr.Microbiol.App.Sci (2017) 6(8): 2851-2856 2851 Original Research Article https://doi.org/10.20546/ijcmas.2017.608.340 Correlation and Path Analysis Studies in Aerobic Rice Mamata Behera 1* , S.P. Monalisa 2 , D.N. Bastia 1 and Chiranjeevi C. Kulkarni 2 1 Department of Plant Breeding and Genetics, 2 Department of Seed Science and Technology, OUAT, Bhubaneswar-751003, India *Corresponding author ABSTRACT Introduction The rice environments in India are extremely diverse. Of the 44.2 million ha of harvested area, about 30.8% are rainfed lowland, 44.9% irrigated, 17.4% rainfed uplands & 6.9% flood prone which profoundly influence the overall rice productivity of the country. Water consumption per kg of rough rice ranges from 1000 to 5000 litres depending on climate, soil conditions, and crop management, and is about two to three times that of other cereals such as wheat or maize. Irrigation for agriculture consumes 2/3 of world’s fresh water and rice alone consumes more than 50 percent of the water used for irrigation in Asia. A fundamental approach to reduce water inputs in rice is to grow the crop aerobically like an irrigated upland crop such as wheat and maize. Early experiments on aerobic rice reveals that the water input in aerobic rice was 50 percent lower (only 470- 650mm) and water productivity was higher by 64-88 percent than irrigated lowland rice (Bouman, 2001). Aerobic rice is a production system in which specially developed varieties are grown in well drained, non-puddled and non-saturated soils. Aerobic rice is a new way of cultivating rice that requires less water than lowland rice. It entails the growing of rice in aerobic soil, with the use of external inputs such as supplementary irrigation and fertilizers and aiming at high yields (Wang et al., 2000). International Journal of Current Microbiology and Applied Sciences ISSN: 2319-7706 Volume 6 Number 8 (2017) pp. 2851-2856 Journal homepage: http://www.ijcmas.com The present study was undertaken with the objective to determine the degree of association between yield and it`s component characters and their direct, indirect effects on grain yield in aerobic rice. Twenty two aerobic genotypes with 4 check varieties were evaluated for identifying their efficiency with respect to 10 yield and yield attributing traits. The result from the study revealed that plant height (r p : 0.509, r g : 0.527), number of fertile grains/panicle (r p : 0.616, r g : 0.651), fertility percentage (r p : 0.750, r g : 0.807) and 100 grain weight (r p : 0.635, r g : 0.760) showed significant positive association with grain yield and from path analysis, high direct contribution to yield was manifested by fertility percentage followed by 100 grain weight. Number of fertile grain / panicle exhibited highest indirect effect on yield via fertility percentage followed by 100 grain weight, plant height via fertility percentage. Keywords Phenotypic correlation, Genotypic correlation, Path analysis, Aerobic rice. Accepted: 23 June 2017 Available Online: 10 August 2017 Article Info