In the present study, inter- and intrapopulation diversity of five named rice landraces from parts of Odisha state of India representing static and dynamic management was examined using 14 sequence-tagged microsatellite site primer pairs. A total of 64 alleles were detected in ten populations of the five named landraces. The number of alleles ranged from 2 to 7, with an average of 4.57 alleles per locus. Of the 64 alleles, 60 were common and four were rare. Moderate-to-low diversity was observed in the landrace populations, with the number of alleles per population ranging from 16 to 25 and the percentage of polymorphism ranging from 14.29 to 64.29, respectively. The analysis of molecular variance indicated a highest variation of 75.7% among populations within groups (static vs. dynamic). The pairwise estimates of FST revealed very high significant population differentiation, which ranged from 0.68 to 0.89, indicating that the populations share limited genetic diversity among them. However, not many variations were observed in the phenotypes of populations representing static and dynamic management. This shows that adaptations of a population apparently persist over generations, but the underlying genotypes change and new alleles or combinations may arise and increase in frequency at the expense of other alleles that have disappeared. The importance of population biology research for in situ conservation requires both descriptive and hypothesis testing to guide technical improvement and management of landrace populations.

Nagaland is one of the eight states in the north-eastern region of India, where a considerable diversity exists in cultivated rice. Recent exploration in this tribal-dominated state has resulted in a collection of 130 rice accessions growing under diverse agroecological conditions. The agromorphological characterization data of 124 rice landraces revealed a significant variability in plant architecture and grain morphological and quality traits. Multivariate analyses including principal component analysis (PCA) and cluster analysis were performed to assess the patterns of morphological variation. The PCA extracted 12 components, which explained 75.4% of the total variation for 38 quantitative and qualitative traits. The cluster analysis grouped 124 rice landraces into five clusters, and the number of landraces in each cluster ranged from 1 to 59. The correlations among the traits are discussed, which will be useful in considering traits for genetic improvement in grain yield and quality. The landraces have been conserved in the national genebank for further utilization.