Assessing Yield Stability and Environmental Adaptation of Hybrid Rice (Oryza sativa L.) Across Tropical Field Conditions

Understanding hybrid rice performance across diverse field environments is essential for improving productivity under tropical conditions. This study aimed to determine the yield potential, adaptability, and stability of promising hybrid rice across eight agroecological zones in Indonesia using parametric, nonparametric, and multivariate methods to aid in genotype selection. Eight promising hybrid rice varieties and four standard check varieties from the Indonesian Center for Rice Research were tested during 2018–2019. The experiment was conducted using a randomized complete block design with four replications in each environment. The results showed significant effects of genotype, environment, and genotype × environment interaction on grain yield. Environmental factors contributed the largest proportion of yield variation (33.5%), indicating the importance of local growing conditions. Univariate parametric and nonparametric analyses identified four hybrid rice genotypes (G2, G4, G7, and G8) with good stability and broad adaptation. Conversely, AMMI and GGE biplot analyses showed that two hybrid rice genotypes (G5 and G7) were broadly adaptable and stable across environments, producing significantly higher yields than the average. The MGIDI analysis identified the ideal genotypes were G2, G4, and G5 considering yield agronomic traits, and broad adapted based on regression stability analysis. From these approaches, we conclude that rice hybrids G2, G4, G5, and G7 were consistent as superior hybrids across all environments, while G1 showed specific adaptation to favorable sites. This study demonstrated the utilization of multi-trait selection and multi-measure stability analysis was effective to identify hybrid rice genotypes with high yield and adaptive in tropical environments of Indonesia.