<![CDATA[Abstract. Kartika T, Hanum L, Eddy S, Yustian I. 2026. Morphological characterization and cluster analysis of local rice landraces (Oryza sativa) from South Sumatra, Indonesia. Biodiversitas 27 (7): d270701. https://doi.org/10.13057/biodiv/d270701. Local rice landraces (Oryza sativa) represent important genetic resources for crop improvement and agrobiodiversity conservation. In South Sumatra, these traditional landraces remain underutilized despite their potential to enhance crop diversity across contrasting agroecosystems, such as tidal swamps and rainfed lowlands, reflecting local ecological adaptation. This study aimed to inventory, morphologically characterize, and analyze the phenotypic variation of 30 local rice landraces collected from these two major agroecosystems. Morphological diversity was assessed following standardized rice descriptor system guidelines using six representative plants per accession. Phenotypic data were analyzed using multivariate statistical approaches. Hierarchical cluster analysis was performed using Gower's dissimilarity coefficient and Ward's method based on 15 morphological traits. The resulting clusters reflect phenotypic similarity among accessions, which may be influenced by environmental conditions, and should not be interpreted as genetic relationships. The evaluated accessions exhibited considerable morphological variation. Plant height ranged from 131 to 217 cm, tiller number from 19.8 to 43.5 per plant, grains per panicle from 176 to 338, and 1000-grain weight from 24.6 to 33.5 g. Several accessions displayed distinctive pigmentation traits, including purple leaf margins. Among the 30 accessions evaluated, cluster analysis grouped them into six major clusters based exclusively on morphological traits, with a silhouette width of 0.56 confirming cluster validity. These groupings showed partial correspondence with agroecosystem origins, including both tidal swamp rice and rainfed lowland accessions. Our study provides baseline information for identifying promising genetic resources for rice breeding and conservation programs.]]>
