Study of diversity among rice accessions with varied level of Brown plant hopper resistance using molecular markers

Abstract

The brown planthopper (BPH), Nilaparvata lugens Stal (Homoptera: Delphacidae), is the most-significant insect pest of rice (Oryza sativa L.) throughout rice-growing countries. In this study DNA-based SSR molecular marker technique was deployed to estimate genetic diversity among 30 rice accessions using seven SSR primers which produced a total of 32 polymorphic markers with the average number of 4.57 markers per primer. The PIC value for all 7 microsatellite loci in the present study ranged from 0.500-0.833. The PIC value was maximum in case of RM186 (0.833) and all the SSR markers were more informative since they recorded more than 0.500 as PIC value. The seven primer pairs showed 3-6 alleles across 30 genotypes grouping the genotypes into 7 groups of different composition indicating that even seven SSR primer pairs can differentiate the cultivars. The analysis indicated that co efficient of similarity among 30 varieties ranged from 0.67 to 1. In the present study, SSR markers were able to reveal greater genetic diversity among the rice varieties and SSR locus RM217 on chromosome # 6 was found to be putatively associated with BPH resistance.