New High Yielding and Lodging-Tolerant Rice Cultivar, “Woncheongbyeo” Mutated from Chucheongbyeo

“Woncheongbyeo” is a new japonica rice (Oryza sativa L.) cultivar developed by mutation techniques from Chucheongbyeo. Chucheongbyeo seeds were irradiated with 300 Gy gamma ray (83.3 rad/min) emitted from ⁶⁰Co at a radiation facility of the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI) in 1992. Compared to Chucheongbyeo, “Woncheongbyeo” has a short stature as 64 cm in culm length, resistance to lodging and 3-days-earlier heading date. It has considerably erect pubescent leaf blades and a tough culm with a good canopy architecture. “Woncheongbyeo” has similar tillers per hill, panicle length, and a little bit higher ripened grain ratio, but more spikelets per panicle than Chucheongbyeo does. It is resistant to blast and leaf blight diseases, but susceptible to major insect pests. “Woncheongbyeo” has a medium to small grain with clear non-glutinous endosperm without a white center and a white belly, and its palatability of cooked rice is excellent. The new cultivar showed 72.0 in taste value by Toyo-midometer, 9.4% and 19.4% in protein and amylose content, respectively. The yield performance of “Woncheongbyeo” was about 5.62 MT/ha, which is by 5.7% higher than that of Chucheongbyeo in the local adaptability trials at 3 sites during 1999~2000. It could be highly adaptable to the northern plain areas or the middle and southern mid-mountainous areas of Korea.