Development and Registration of 'Colorado', a High-Yielding Rice Cultivar

An inbred rice (Oryza sativa L.) cultivar development program was initiated at the Texas A&M AgriLife Research and Extension Center at Beaumont in 2001 to develop commercial cultivars that produce high main crop grain yields while using significantly less water due to its shortened growing cycle, that is, no ratoon crop. 'Colorado' (Reg. No. CV-146; PI 669434) was the first cultivar produced by this project and was released in 2012. Colorado was derived from a 'Cocodrie' x 'L202' cross and is unique in that it is the first rice cultivar developed using model-and marker-assisted selection. It possesses several traits identified to produce an ultra-high-yielding water efficient main crop plant type, with the combination of desirable traits such as faster node production rate and greater number of tillers. These traits were identified on physiological-based rice plant simulation modeling and DNA marker-assisted selection. Colorado is an early-maturing (116 d to maturity), semidwarf (93.0 cm), long-grain (9.62 mm length; 2.71 mm width) plant type. It had a high main crop grain yield (9920 kg ha(-1)), with a 7% yield advantage over Cocodrie, which was the most commonly grown inbred long-grain cultivar in Texas during the period of Colorado's development. Colorado has high whole grain (62.3%) and total milling yield (74.0%), possesses the Pi-km gene that confers resistance to several blast (caused by Pyricularia oryzae) races, and has the same cooking quality as Cocodrie, 'Cheniere', 'Catahoula', and 'Francis'.