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QTLs for drought escape and tolerance identified in a set of random introgression lines of rice

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Abstract

A large set of 254 introgression lines in an elite indica genetic background were evaluated for grain yield (GY) and related traits under the irrigated (control) and drought (stress) conditions in two consecutive years for genetic dissection of adaptive strategies of rice to water stress. A total of 36 quantitative trait loci (QTLs) affecting heading date (HD), plant height (PH), GY and yield components were identified and most QTLs showed pronounced differential expression either qualitatively or quantitatively in response to drought. These QTLs could be grouped into three major types based on their behaviors under control and stress conditions. Type I included 12 QTLs that expressed under both the stress and non-stress conditions. Type II comprised 17 QTLs that expressed under irrigation but not under stress. Type III included seven QTLs that were apparently induced by stress. The observation that the Lemont (japonica) alleles at all HD QTLs except QHd5 resulted in early heading under stress appeared to be responsible for the putative adaptation of Lemont to drought by escaping, whereas the Teqing (indica) alleles at most PH/GY QTLs were consistently associated with increased yield potential and trait stability and thus contributed to DT. Our result that most DT QTLs were non-allelic with QTLs for drought escaping suggests that the two adaptive strategies in the parental lines are under possible negative regulation of two largely non-overlapping genetic systems.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Dr. McCouch of Cornell University for providing us with the sequence information of the SSR markers. This study was supported by grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, BMZ/GTZ of the Germany Government to Z. K. Li/H. R. Lafitte, and by the 973 and 863 Project from the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology and the ‘948’ Program from the Chinese Ministry of Agriculture.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Crop Sciences/National Key Facility for Crop Gene Resources and Genetic Improvement, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, 12 South Zhong-Guan-Cun Street, 100081, Beijing, China

    J. L. Xu, Y. M. Gao, B. Y. Fu & Z. K. Li

  2. International Rice Research Institute, DAPO Box 7777, Metro Manila, Philippines

    J. L. Xu, H. R. Lafitte, R. Torres & Z. K. Li

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  1. J. L. Xu
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  2. H. R. Lafitte
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  3. Y. M. Gao
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  4. B. Y. Fu
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  5. R. Torres
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  6. Z. K. Li
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Correspondence to Z. K. Li.

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Communicated by T. Sasaki

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Xu, J.L., Lafitte, H.R., Gao, Y.M. et al. QTLs for drought escape and tolerance identified in a set of random introgression lines of rice. Theor Appl Genet 111, 1642–1650 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00122-005-0099-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00122-005-0099-8

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