Vol. 12, Special Issue 10 (2023)

Author(s):
Rahul Kumar Meena, Kanika Rani and Rajinder K Jain

Abstract:
Restructuring the rice production system to reduce water consumption during cultivation is necessary to combat the negative impact of global climate change. The present study was conducted to identify QTLs associated with various morpho-physiological traits under aerobic production systems using back cross population. The findings showed that aerobic parent MAS26 showed significantly higher performance for most of the studied traits except grain length/breadth ratio. The studied traits showed again yield/plant revealed a positive correlation with an effective number of tillers/plants and 1000-grain weight. The composite interval mapping identified a total of 22 QTL0s for various morpho-physiological traits in BC₁F₂ (11) and BC₁F₃ (11) populations. The phenotypic variation explained by the identified QTL ranged from 9.1 to 84.0%.Grain yield/plant was associated with four QTLs on chromosomes 1, 3, and 7 with LOD values ranging from 3.31 to 8.43 explaining phenotypic variation 26.46 to 58.57%. The identification of QTL conferring improved adaptation and higher grain yield under direct seeding aerobic environment may facilitate the development of high-yielding direct-seeded rice varieties. However, QTLs identified in this study were putative and need to be further confirmed followed by validation.