Introgression of rice blast and bacterial leaf blight resistance genes into HPR2143 rice variety through marker assisted selection and Anther culture

The use of resistant rice cultivars is the most proficient way to overcome rice blast and bacterial blight diseases in rice. Cultivars, however, experience a rapid breakdown in their resistance, predominantly due to the advent of new pathotypes. Therefore, for durable resistance, it is important to combine multiple genes that impart resistance to more than one pathotypes into one genetic background. Foreground selection of BC2F2 plants of two crosses (HPR2143/DHMAS164 and HPR2143/PB1) was done to detect the presence of blast resistance genes i.e. Pita and Pi9 in these plants. Plants homozygous for gene Pita were screened by a pair of gene specific markers YL87/155 (coupling dominant) and YL87/183 (repulsion dominant). Likewise, homozygous positive plants for gene Pi9 were identified using the co-dominant marker Pi9STS-1. For bacterial blight (BLB) resistance genes, BC2F2 plants of two crosses (HPR2143/IRBB54 and HPR2143/PR114) were screened for genes Xa21 and Xa38 using gene-derived markers BLB248 and Oso4g53050-1, respectively. Anther culture of developed F1s was attempted for fixation of genes.