Genetic variation of a single pollen-derived doubled haploid population in rice

Abstract

Somaclonal variation was observed in the field on doubled haploid plants derived from single pollen of a rice cultivar Hwaseongbyeo. The variations of seven quantitative traits including plant height and one qualitative trait (pubescence) in 436 lines (R2 generation) were analyzed. The number of lines which fell beyond the boundaries of the 95% confidence intervals of the check variety, Hwaseongbyeo was checked for each quantitative trait, and of those fertility showed the highest variation frequency (85.6%), followed by plant height (77.5%), flag leaf length (66.5%), grains per panicle (42.2%), days to heading (34.5%), panicle length (30.7%) and panicles per hill (22.7%). And the variations of quantitative traits except days to flowering appeared to move in the negative direction compared to Hwaseongbyeo. Variability within lines was also observed for quantitative and qualitative traits. Twenty-nine R2 lines (7%) segregated for pubescence and 130 R2 lines (30%) showed variation with regard to fertility. This suggests that mutations usually occur before diploidization. Twenty-nine R2 lines representing a wide spectrum of variation were chosen for RAPD analysis. The number of lines showing DNA polymorphism compared to Hwaseongbyeo ranged 0 from to 10 according to the primer used and this seems to indicate that specific loci have highly mutable genomic site.utable genomic site.