Making an Indian traditional rice variety Mahsuri, bacterial blight resistant using marker-assisted selection.

摘要

Mahsuri a popular traditional variety and the first rain-fed mega variety of the Indian sub-continent. It is highly susceptible to bacterial leaf blight caused by Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzae. Nine best performing families of Mahsuri pyramid containing four bacterial blight resistance genes (Xa4, xa5, xa13 and Xa21) were evaluated for agronomic, yield and its related characters viz. days to 50% flowering, plant height, number of tillers, panicle length, filled grains per panicle, grain weight, and yield under natural and disease pressure conditions for three consecutive wet seasons. In addition these pyramids were also evaluated for three different spacings to find out the optimum spacing under disease free and disease pressure conditions. Results revealed that under disease free conditions there was no significant difference between the pyramids and the parent for the characters evaluated in each spacing. However characters plant height, number of tillers, panicle length, filled grains per panicle, yield per plant and yield per sq. m. showed significant variation between the different spacings across seasons. Under heavy disease pressure the parent exhibited highly susceptible reaction whereas the pyramid families were highly resistant. A wider spacing had less yield loss when compared to dense planting under BB infestation in case of parent. There was no such yield loss in the pyramid families. When yield per sq. m. was taken into consideration the 20x20 cm spacing showed the highest yield when compared to the other two spacings since number of plants were more. The pyramids insulated the yield loss against bacterial leaf blight and are a gain to the farmers to help overcome the heavy yield losses due to this disease. These pyramids have the potential to replace the parent and can be used directly. In addition they can be used as donors for bacterial blight resistance in any breeding program.