Introgression of blast resistance genes (Pi-54) into elite rice cultivar kalanamak through marker-assisted Selection

Abstract

Kalanamak is one of the finest quality scented rice of India (Singh et al., 2003). Kalanamak rice is affected by blast disease intolerance due to which its yield reduces. To overcome these problems we pyramided blast resistance tolerance gene into Kalanamak by marker assisted backcrossing breeding programme. Kalanamak was crossed with Tetep for blast resistance (Pi54) and independent backcross generation were developed followed by foreground selection and phenotyping for targeted trait. Each independent backcross generation was further crossed together to pool the gene into a single background and gene positive plants were selected by foreground selection, phenotyping, and background selection. Hybrid plants (K-T) carrying the genes had blast reistance. A substantial ground work has been done to incorporate the gene but there is need to systematically study the effect of background genome on expression of major genes control for blast resistance. Advanced backcross generation of K-T(BC1F1) have to be developed so that we can achieve total recovery of recurrent parent genome along with the desired trait/gene as well as eliminate the effect of linkage drag of donor segments