Abstract
The biomass yield (plant weight) of rice fluctuates from year to year. In a previous study, we demonstrated that six quantitative trait loci (QTLs) contribute to the variation in the plant weight of recombinant inbred lines (RILs) of high-yielding Japanese rice cultivars. However, it remains unclear whether the effects of those QTLs are stable over multiple years. Therefore, we evaluated the effect of the alleles on the plant weight of RILs over multiple years, including a change of fertilization level (i.e., in different environments). Even though the biomass yields of all RILs fluctuated among environments, RILs that were selected on the basis of the genotypes of the detected QTLs had a stable rank order of plant weight that corresponded to their genotypes. This multiple-environment experiment reveals the highly significant contribution of both genotypic and environmental variances to the observed variance in plant weight. A marginally significant QTL–environment interaction was detected at only one of the six QTLs, with a subtle contribution. These results support the idea that the biomass yield of rice can be improved through QTL-based allele selection.
Highlights
Rice (Oryza sativa L.) is the staple food of more than half of the world’s population [1], and in areas where populations continue to grow [2, 3], further improvement in grain yield has become a major challenge for rice breeders and geneticists
The biomass yield of all recombinant inbred lines (RILs) fluctuated between years
The rank order of plant weight of selected RILs that corresponded to their genotypes was consistently stable across environments (Fig 2)
Summary
Rice (Oryza sativa L.) is the staple food of more than half of the world’s population [1], and in areas where populations continue to grow [2, 3], further improvement in grain yield has become a major challenge for rice breeders and geneticists. Biomass yield has been an important target trait in rice-breeding programs in these countries. The effect of artificial selection on specific traits depends on the genetic architecture of the target species. The yields of crops, such as maize [4], rice [5, 6], and wheat [7], are complex quantitative traits that involve multiple quantitative trait loci (QTLs), so it is not simple to improve them. The crop environment varies depending on the season, year, location, and a specific area within the field.
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