Molecular Characterisation of Rice Genotypes for Fertility Restorer Genes and Wide Compatibility Locus Using SSR Markers

The present experiment aims to characterise the rice genotypes for the identification of fertility restorer genes and a wide compatibility locus. A total of 32 genotypes were grown under Rice Improvement Project, Department of Plant Breeding and Genetics, College of Agriculture, J.N.K.V.V, Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh, India for the fertility restoration in rice (Oryza sativa L.) is traditionally complex and time-consuming, as it involves test crosses with a set of cytoplasmic male sterile (CMS) lines and evaluation of F1 for pollen and spikelet fertility. The use of molecular markers linked with fertility-restoring Rf genes can improve the selection efficiency, save time and avoid the complications associated with phenotype-based screening. Among The rice genotype 15 were strong fertility restorers, 3 partial restorers, 5 weak maintainers and 4 were maintainers with no seed setting and rest 5 genotypes were partial maintainers. Thirteen SSR markers reported to be linked to Rf genes were analysed on the rice population included for this study. Out of thirteen markers, 7 were polymorphic while six were monomorphic. Molecular study revealed that RMS-SF-21 reported specific for male sterility maintainer alleles in the genotypes WGL-32100, JGL-3828 and RPHR- 612. Marker S5-inDel is specific marker produced three alleles (indica, japonica and wide-compatible) on NPT 13-01, RYT 3378, JR (SF) 21 and PRR 812 genotypes for development of high fertility as well as high yielding rice hybrids. Genotypes CBSN 168 and Jagtiyal Sanalu found to be partial restoration and providing single banding pattern 420 bp while, genotypes Kranti, JRSF-21, RYT-3378 and PRR-312 provided dominancy of japonica neutral alleles and all these genotypes are normal fertile and good adopted to the environment. Overall study revealed that the S5-inDel marker is valuable, cost-effective tool in heterosis breeding to identify the allelic status at S5 locus in rice genotypes.