Parental polymorphic survey for high Zn and Fe content in grains of rice (Oryza sativa. L) using SSR markers

To begin marker assisted selection or marker assisted back cross breeding for introgression of a desirable trait into a variety from the donor parent, study of parental polymorphism is a pre-requisite. Unless the parents are polymorphic for the traits of interest, the further selection of plants carrying the traits of interest is not possible in the progenies. The experiment was conducted in Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi. In the present study Rice microsatellite (RM) markers were used to study the parental polymorphism between the selected two parents PR122 widely grown high yielding but low level of zinc in rice grain (15.90mg kg-1) and IR10M196, pre breeding line found with higher Zn content (30.39mg kg-1) from IRRI, Philippines. The two parents were screened for parental polymorphism using 647 SSR markers, of which 108 markers exhibited polymorphism. The overall polymorphism level for the surveyed SSR markers was 16.69% across the 12 chromosomes. Construction of a Linkage Map could be ensued procuring the generated genotyping data which could further avail QTL analysis and identification of markers linked to zinc content.