Marker assisted recurrent selection for genetic male sterile population improvement in rice

Abstract

In the present study, by deploying marker assisted recurrent selection (MARS) strategy, the improvement of IR58025B genetic male sterile maintainer population for drought and salinity tolerance was carried out to develop maintainers with drought and salinity tolerance. Individual crosses were performed among sterile plants of IR58025B maintainer population and donors of drought tolerance viz., Vandana (qDTY12.1) and FL478 (Saltol). F1 plants were confirmed for the presence of target genes/QTLs with the help of SSR markers and raised to produce F2 seeds. Selected F 2 plants were harvested and seeds from each cross combination were mixed in equal proportions to generate population for the first random mating or recurrent selection cycle. The same process is continued up to 4th cycle and 200 selected plants were subjected to genotyping for drought and salinity with the help of reported SSR markers. About 48 plants were found positive for salinity tolerance, 17 plants were positive for drought and 10 plants were positive for both the traits. These lines were advanced by pedigree method of breeding for deriving maintainers with drought and salinity tolerance.