Development of introgression lines in high yielding, semi-dwarf genetic backgrounds to enable improvement of modern rice varieties for tolerance to multiple abiotic stresses free from undesirable linkage drag.

Occurrence of multiple abiotic stresses in a single crop season has become more frequent than before. Most of the traditional donors possessing tolerance to abiotic stresses are tall, low-yielding with poor grain quality. To facilitate efficient use of complex polygenic traits in rice molecular breeding research, we undertook development of introgression lines in background of high-yielding, semi-dwarf varieties with good grain quality.

Marker-Assisted Improvement of the Elite Maintainer Line of Rice, IR 58025B for Wide Compatibility ( ) Gene.

The degree of heterosis in different hybrid rice varieties is reported to be at the highest in / cross combination, however, there is a problem of sterility and semi-sterility in such inter sub specific hybrids. To overcome this problem, it is essential to develop parental lines having wide compatibility ( ) gene. In this study, a functional marker S5-InDel was used for marker-assisted backcrossing (MABB) to introgress gene from Dular into the genetic background of a widely grown recurrent parent IR 58025B, a maintainer line of wild-abortive (WA) cytoplasmic male sterile line, IR 58025A.