Improvement and characterization of medium grain rice germplasm for US breeders and growers

Authors: Jia, Yulin; Jia, Melissa; Box, Heather; Lin, Michael

Submitted to: Meeting Abstract
Publication Type: Abstract Only
Publication Acceptance Date: 1/11/2023
Publication Date: N/A
Citation: N/A

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: Medium-grain rice like Calrose has been demanded by consumers and most premium medium grain rice is grown in California, USA. As a part of base broadening effort, we developed a medium grain rice germplasm Eclipse with effective blast resistance genes that can be grown in the southern USA and California. Eclipse was developed by crossing a premium long grain blast resistant rice variety Katy with a medium grain rice variety M-202 with Calrose quality and resistant F2 progeny was backcrossed into M202 for another 5 generations. A BC5 line #13 (renamed #13 as Eclipse recommended by Dr. McClung) was selfed to produce pure seeds for evaluation of agronomic traits using replicated field experiments in Arkansas and in Uniform Regional Rice Nursery for 2 years. Resistance to rice blast was verified by the use of gene specific markers for blast resistance genes Pi-ta and Ptr and results were verified with 10 differential blast races under greenhouse conditions and natural infections under field conditions in Louisiana and Puerto Rico. Grain quality is highly similar to M-202 as determined by genetic markers for amylose, aroma, and the Alk gene. Eclipse is a semidwarf glabrous type of medium grain rice has a low amylose content can be directly used by rice growers for premium medium grain rice production and development of new rice varieties.