Rice is life for Asians and Indians in particular. The studies of rice germplasms are essential for identification of rice cultivator for producing new hybrid varieties. Thirtyseven rice germplasms consisting of thirty-five indigenous rice including three wild rice varieties Oryza rufipogon local collection I, II and III from Manipur and two wild rice O. rufipogon and O. nivara were studied during the present investigation. Morphoqualitative and numerical taxonomic analyses were used to classify rice cultivars on the basis of phenotypic traits. Dendrogram was generated for the Euclidian distance, phenotypically all the cultivars were classified into different groups based on morphoqualitative characters. Possession of primary green colour is considered the most advanced form and thus occupy top position in the evolutionary sequence of the all the 37 germplasms. Anthocyanin pigmentation, in the present studies, varied from completely non-pigmented (green) to pigmented in, as many as five different plant parts. Distribution of anthocyanin pigmentation in different organs of rice plant was very variable. The rice germplasms were classified into different groups according to the combinations of anthocyanin pigmentation. The result indicated that agro-morphological traits were helpful for characterization which can be used as a broad spectrum approach to assess genetic diversity among morphologically distinguishable rice cultivars.
