Maintenance and evaluation of cytoplasmic male sterile lines and their maintainers is essential in implementing the hybrid rice breed - ing program based on CMS system. The desirable characteristics of a commercially usable CMS lines are: its stability for pollen sterility,
adaptability to target environments, good outcrossing rate, good com - bining ability, and easy restorability. An active hybrid rice breeding program has to maintain an array of CMS lines in different cyto - plasmic and nuclear backgrounds. These must be maintained and evaluated systematically to select those which can be used for devel - oping commercial hybrids. The others are retained as germplasm to maintain cytoplasmic diversity in the collection for future use. In this nursery, we maintain and evaluate the available CMS lines on a continuous basis.
Objectives
• To collect and maintain genetically diverse CMS lines introduced