Introgression of blast resistance genes into the elite rice variety MR263 through marker-assisted backcrossing

• Main Authors: Muhammad M Hasan, Mohd Y Rafii, Mohd Razi Ismail, Maziah Mahmood, Md. Amirul Alam, Harun Abdul Rahim, Mohammad A Malek, Mohammad Abdul Latif
• Format: Article
• Language: English; English
• Published: John Wiley & Sons Inc. 2015
• Subjects: QK1-989 Botany; S1-(972) Agriculture (General)
• Online Access: https://eprints.ums.edu.my/id/eprint/34899/1/Abstract.pdf; https://eprints.ums.edu.my/id/eprint/34899/2/Fulltext.pdf; https://eprints.ums.edu.my/id/eprint/34899/; https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jsfa.7222; https://doi.org/10.1002/jsfa.7222

BACKGROUND Blast caused by the fungus Magnaporthe oryzae is a significant disease threat to rice across the world and is especially prevalent in Malaysia. An elite, early-maturing, high-yielding Malaysian rice variety, MR263, is susceptible to blast and was used as the recurrent parent in this study. To improve MR263 disease resistance, the Pongsu Seribu 1 rice variety was used as donor of the blast resistance Pi-7(t), Pi-d(t)1 and Pir2-3(t) genes and qLN2 quantitative trait locus (QTL). The objective was to introgress these blast resistance genes into the background of MR263 using marker-assisted backcrossing with both foreground and background selection. RESULTS Improved MR263-BR-3-2, MR263-BR-4-3, MR263-BR-13-1 and MR263-BR-26-4 lines carrying the Pi-7(t), Pi-d(t)1 and Pir2-3(t) genes and qLN2 QTL were developed using the simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers RM5961 and RM263 (linked to the blast resistance genes and QTL) for foreground selection and a collection of 65 polymorphic SSR markers for background selection in backcrossed and selfed generations. A background analysis revealed that the highest rate of recurrent parent genome recovery was 96.1% in MR263-BR-4-3 and 94.3% in MR263-BR-3-2. CONCLUSION The addition of blast resistance genes can be used to improve several Malaysian rice varieties to combat this major disease.