Quantitative genetic analysis of biotypes of the brown planthopper Nilaparvata lugens: heritability of virulence to resistant rice varieties

Abstract

The virulence of Nilaparvata lugens Stål (Homoptera: Delphacidae) to a resistant variety of rice, Oryza sativa L., is suggested to be under polygenic control. To determine whether the virulence of N. lugens is a quantitative character that has continuous distribution or a threshold character that has a few discontinuous phenotypic forms and is determined by some underlying continuous variable, I examined the frequency distribution of honeydew excretion that has been used as a measure of ability of attacking the rice plants, and the relationship between honeydew excretion and the oviposition rate of N. lugens females using a japonica rice line Saikai 190 which has a resistance gene Bph 1. The frequency distribution in honeydew excretion significantly differed from the normal distribution, but two distributions below and above 10 mg honeydew excretion for two days did not significantly deviate from normality, suggesting a bimodal distribution. There were significant differences in the proportion of females ovipositing and the number of eggs deposited between the female groups that excreted 0–10 mg honeydew and more than 20 mg honeydew. Within these female groups, however, the reproductive performances were not different. Thus, virulence of N. lugens can be analyzed as a threshold character that has two distinct phenotypes, virulent and avirulent. I estimated the heritabilities of the virulence of N. lugens by parent-offspring regression using the percentage of virulent females in a full-sib family. The estimates of heritability were 0.41 on Saikai 190 and 0.55 on ASD7, carrying the bph 2 gene. These results show that the N. lugens population has substantial genetic variation in virulence. The regression coefficients on female and male parents were similar, suggesting similar genetic contributions by both parents. When the parental families were examined on Saikai 190 and the progeny on ASD7, the regression coefficient approached zero. There may be a low genetic correlation between virulences to the two varieties.