varieties grown in the rainfed lowland drought-prone areas are
varieties bred for the irrigated ecosystem. In non-drought years,
these varieties provide high yield to farmers, but, owing to their
susceptibility to drought, they show a high-yield reduction in
mild to moderate drought years and fail completely in severe
drought-stress years. Our experiments confirm this empirical
observations. Among the F3:4 populations, crosses involving
the drought-tolerant lines (IR42253-61-1-1-2-3, JGL 384,
Badshah Bhog) and high-yielding lowland but droughtsusceptible
cultivars significantly out-yielded the crosses that
involved the two lowland high-yielding but drought-susceptible
cultivars (Table 6). Similarly, the best lines from the crosses
involving drought-tolerant donors also out-yielded the best
lines from crosses not involving drought-tolerant donors. Thus,
we observed a strong positive effect of using of drought-tolerant
donors in obtaining high-yielding drought-tolerant segregants.