A New Early Maturity Rice Cultivar, “Unkwang” with High Grain Quality and Cold Tolerance

Unkwang is a new japonica rice cultivar developed from the cross between Sobibyeo (Iksan435), high yield and cold tolerance cultivar and Cheolweon 54, early maturity cultivar at Honam Agricultural Reaserch Institute (HARI), NICS, RDA, in 2004. This cultivar has a short grain shape and about 113 days growth duration from transplanting to harvesting under the northern plain, the mid mountainous and the southern mountainous area of Korea. The milled kernel of Unkwang is translucent with nonglutinous endosperm. Amylase content of rice grain is 19.1% and better palatability of cooked rice of Unkwang compared with Odaebyeo. This cultivar shows resistant to leaf blast and bacterial blight pathogens of K₁, K₂ and K₃ but susceptible to major virus diseases and planthoppers. The milled rice yield of Unkwang is about 5.86 MT/ha under the standard fertilizer level of the ordinary transplanting cultivation. Unkwang would be adaptable for the northern plain, the mid mountainous and the southern mountainous area of Korea.