Author(s):

Jitesh Kumar, Dr. Bijendra Kumar, Manoj Kumar Prajapati, Chhail Bihari and Ashish Rai

Abstract: Rice not only constitutes the most important staple food for half of the world’s population, especially in Asia but is also an important export commodity. In India, rice crop is attacked by several bacterial, fungal, viral pathogens and pests. However, “grain discoloration” is a complex disease due to infection by certain microorganisms on the glumes, kernels, or both. In the recent years, it is emerging as a potent threat to rice crops. Seed discoloration is considered to affect the grain quality, breaking of rice grains during milling, weight loss, exports, post-harvest losses, crop yield and ultimately badly affect the economy. The present investigation was undertaken to determine the nature of seed discoloration, causes and their effect on seed quality, seed transmission, detection and identifications of different seed borne fungal pathogens associated with grain discoloration of rice. In the present study, seven types of seed discoloration namely; light to dark brown dot like spot, dark purple discoloration, light pink discoloration, eye shaped spots with ash grey center, ash grey discoloration marked by brown band and black discoloration were observed. However, light to dark brown dot like spots were found to be most predominant type of seed discoloration. Pant Basmati 1 variety exhibited maximum discoloration while, Pusa Basmati 1509 had minimum discoloration. Light pink discoloration was present only in three varieties namely; Sarju-52, Pusa Sugandh-5 and Pant Basmati-1, while, eye shaped spots with ash grey center type of discoloration was not observed in varieties Govind, Pusa basmati-1509 and Pant Dhan -21.

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